[ Thanks to Matt for this
link. ]
“IBM has won a $290 million government contract to build what
are expected to be the world’s two fastest supercomputers at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the company plans to
announce Tuesday.“One machine, ASCI Purple for nuclear weapons research, will be
three times faster than the world’s current top-ranked
supercomputer, NEC’s Earth Simulator, which has been clocked at 35
trillion calculations per second, or “teraflops.” The other
machine, the Linux-powered Blue Gene/L for civilian research, will
be 10 times faster than Earth Simulator, with a speed of 360
teraflops, according to IBM.“Also included in the $290 million government contract is a
third, smaller computer–a comparatively ordinary cluster of 944
x335servers and 32 x345 machines…”