IBM’s “Roadrunner” crowned world’s fastest supercomputer

by Stevie Smith - Jun 10 2008, 11:12

While most of us hardly understand what a “petaflop” is, let alone stand a chance of ever seeing our lowly home computers perform one, it’s still strangely reassuring to know IBM’s super-speedy Roadrunner supercomputer is waiting in the wings should we ever have petaflop requirements that desperately need attending to. $IBM\'s Roadrunner supercomputer hits petaflop landmark. Image: Popofatticus/Flickr.$

IBM\'s Roadrunner supercomputer hits petaflop landmark. Image: Popofatticus/Flickr.

More specifically, scientists revealed on Monday that IBM’s massively powerful Roadrunner has been awarded the mantle of the world’s fastest supercomputer after making good on its six-year, $100 million USD budget and performing 1,000 trillion calculations per second -- yes, you guessed it, a petaflop.The petaflop performance marker was surpassed by a team of engineers working out of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and IBM Corp. on a system that is predominantly used for the contributory development of nuclear weaponry and the simulation of nuclear detonations.According to IBM, the aptly-named Roadrunner is markedly faster than anything available at a mainstream level, delivering twice the performance of IBM’s own Blue Gene supercomputer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is itself three times quicker than any other supercomputer operating in the world today.For those of us with brains too small to absorb that level of processing prowess, Roadrunner offers the combined computing speed of 100,000 of today’s most powerful laptops. Or, if that information still fails to successfully compute, IBM gleefully notes that if every single one of the world’s population toiled away on a laptop for 24 hours a day, it would require a gargantuan effort equating to 46 years for us to struggle through what Roadrunner can process in just one day of operation.“The computer is a speed demon,” trumpeted Thomas D’Agostino, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration. Beyond stating the obvious, D’Agostino went on to say that Roadrunner’s startling performance “will allow us to solve tremendous problems,” which could lead to significant advances in the fields of civil engineering, medicine and science.Interestingly, the Roadrunner has its roots based in the videogame industry. According to David Turek, vice president of IBM’s supercomputing program, the newly-crowned supercomputer is a massively advanced version of the Cell processor currently powering Sony’s PlayStation 3 home console.However, don’t expect to fire a Roadrunner up for your videogames any time soon; at least not without a vast acreage of real estate to accommodate the 500,000lb computing beast, which requires a huge 6,000 square feet of space along with 57 miles of fibre optic cabling. And, it may be a while before videogames ever make good use of 6,948 dual-core chips and 12,960 Cell engines across 80 terabytes of memory in 288 connected racks.

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CalJun 10th, 2008 - 12:55:26

Yes, but does it have a square root button?

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Super Danger DaveJun 10th, 2008 - 13:05:56

Think of the possibilities !!!!!

10 print 'Hello World'
20 goto 10

Imagine that running at 1 petaflop !

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Jimi HendrixJun 10th, 2008 - 13:18:11

Hope it doesn't have Vista

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HiRollerJun 10th, 2008 - 13:20:07

Still takes 2 minutes to load Windows.

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MattJun 10th, 2008 - 13:24:25

ROFL! I just wanted the 3 above me to know, I find you all very funny. :P

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MattJun 10th, 2008 - 13:25:17

bah someone posted b4 me.. not you.. the other 3 lol

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HoppJun 10th, 2008 - 13:36:14

I find it ?ironic? that they used technology originally designed for games and leisure. Massively advanced...and many many ps3s all put together = super computer used to model nuclear weapons and climate.

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APCJun 10th, 2008 - 14:05:32

Now if you swapped out the dual cores for quad cores.....

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StanJun 10th, 2008 - 14:19:19

Has the author heard of Moore's Law (computing power doubles every 18 months)? If it holds up, in only 30 years the high-end laptops of the future which today run 1/100,000 the speed of the roadrunner will surpass it by a wide margin. In fact these future laptops should run more than 10 times faster than the roadrunner and will likely be cheaper than todays high-end models. BEEP-BEEP!

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StanJun 10th, 2008 - 15:08:28

To continue the Moore's Law theme, in 50 years those laptops should reach the point where they surpass the Roadrunner speeds by a factor of 100,000+!!! It's just not a linear world...look out for the singularity (see Ray Kurzweil's book)...it's coming to a livingroom near you. :)

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