IBM to build massive supercomputer for U.S. government

"Sequoia will use approximately 1.6 million processing cores, all IBM Power chips, running Linux, which dominates high-performance computing at this scale. IBM is still developing a 45-nanometer chip for the system and may produce something with eight or 16 cores -- or more -- for it. Although the final chip configuration has yet to be determined, the system will have 1.6TB of memory and be housed in 96 "refrigerator-size" racks.

"The cost of the system wasn't disclosed.

"The supercomputer is also helping to drive a massive power upgrade at Lawrence Livermore, which is increasing the amount of electricity available for all its computing systems from 12.5 megawatts to 30 megawatts. To achieve the upgrade, it will run more power lines to its facility. Sequoia alone is expected to use about 6 megawatts, according to Seager."

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