To print: Click here or Select File and then Print from your browser's menu

This story was printed from silicon.com, located at http://www.silicon.com/

Story URL: http://hardware.silicon.com/servers/0,39024647,11014465,00.htm

IBM supercomputer to pass one quadrillion operations mark

By Dominic Maher

Published: Monday 06 December 1999

IBM is investing $100m in exploratory research to create and build a computer 500-times more powerful than what is available today.

Nicknamed "Blue Gene", the supercomputer will be capable of more than one quadrillion operations per second (1 petaflop), which will outstrip Big Blue's last supercomputer offering, Deep Blue, by 1,000 times and the average desktop machine by two million.

Blue Gene will be mainly deployed for complex research into folding proteins - allowing researchers to study how proteins fold- to assist in the understanding of diseases.