IBM supercomputers getting peta all the time

IBM has devised a new Blue Gene supercomputer - the Blue Gene/P - that will be capable of processing more than three quadrillion operations a second, or three petaflops – a potential record. Blue Gene/P is designed to continuously operate at more than one petaflop in real-world situations.

Blue Gene/P marks a significant milestone in computing. Last November, the Blue Gene/L was ranked as the most powerful computer on the planet: it topped out at 280 teraflops, or 280 trillion operations a second during continuous operation.

Put another way, a Blue Gene/P operating at a petaflop is performing more operations than a 1.5-mile-high stack of laptops.

The development of Blue Gene/P seems certain to extend IBM's position atop the Top 500 Supercomputer list, which comes out this week at the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany. IBM had 93 computers on the list when the rankings last came out in November; four were in the top 10.

The US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory will deploy the first Blue Gene/P in the US later this year.

Michael Kanellos writes for CNET News.com