The world's fastest commercial supercomputer has been launched by computer giant IBM.Blue Gene/P is three times more potent than the current fastest machine, BlueGene/L, also built by IBM. The latest number cruncher is capable of operating at so called "petaflop" speeds - the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.
Approximately 100,000 times more powerful than a PC, the first machine has been bought by the US government. It will be installed at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois later this year.
Two further machines are planned for US laboratories and a fourth has been bought by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council for its Daresbury Laboratory Cheshire. The ultra powerful machines will be used for complex simulations to study everything from particle physics to nanotechnology.
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