IBM prototype overtakes Earth Simulator as world's most powerful machine

IBM yesterday announced that a prototype supercomputer had surpassed the computing power of the NEC Earth Simulator in Japan, currently the world's most powerful machine.

During internal testing in a research lab, IBM's Blue Gene/L system - a new supercomputing architecture it has been developing since 2001 - hit a benchmark of 36.01 teraflops, edging past the Earth Simulator's 35.86 teraflops.

A teraflop is one trillion calculations per second.

During its development, the Blue Gene/L supercomputer has been steadily notching up its performance rating, with earlier prototypes qualifying for entry on the TOP500 list - a biannual report of the world's most powerful supercomputers - in June this year.

But its anticipated power will be substantially higher when the full system is completed next year: IBM expects to deliver a supercomputer operating at 360 teraflops, but only a tenth of the size of its current rivals and consuming just one fifteenth as much power.

The full Blue Gene/L machine, which is scheduled for delivery to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California in early 2005.

By making major reductions in power consumption, cost and space requirements, the system will help to turn massively parallel computing into a more affordable and practical tool for science and industry.