IBM Set to Build Biggest Computer Yet

By Alex Handy

February 3, 2009 —  The Department of Energy's National Nuclear Safety Administration has tapped IBM to build two new supercomputers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. The two systems, one named Dawn and the other called Sequoia, will be used to chart and predict weather patterns and, potentially, earthquakes.

The two systems will be staggered in their release. Dawn, a smaller machine expected to top out at 500 teraflops, will be installed and running later this quarter. Sequoia, which should tip the scales at 20 petaflops, will begin coming online in 2012. Sequoia will be stocked with over 1.6 million IBM Power Series processing cores spread across over 98,000 compute nodes.

When Sequoia comes online, IBM said that it will be more powerful than all of the top 500 supercomputing systems in the world combined. It will include 96 refrigerated cabinets, 1.6 petabytes of RAM and live in a space that's just over 3,000 sq. feet.

“The longstanding partnership of NNSA, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and IBM is ushering in an era of multi-petaflops computing,” said NNSA administrator Thomas D’Agostino. “These powerful machines will provide NNSA with the capabilities needed to resolve time-urgent and complex scientific problems, ensuring the viability of the nation’s nuclear deterrent into the future. This endeavor will also help maintain U.S. leadership in high-performance computing and promote scientific discovery.”



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