World’s Fastest Super Computer From IBM?

IBM to release its new chip named Power7 microprocessor by next year which is presently being used in the project of Blue Waters i.e., a new supercomputer being constructed at Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. The project is a part of NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) and is said to be launched in 2011.

Supercomputer refers to a huge collection of processors that help in the working out of complex problems such as analyzing of natural-phenomenon, global warming, curing of diseases etc. The supercomputer being built now makes use of Octo-Core Power7 processors which will be able to achieve initial peak performance of 10 petaflops, and theoretical peak computing capability of 16 petaflops and is said to be 10 times faster than the present supercomputer. There is a water cooling mechanism devised by IBM engineers to check the heat of the system and keep it cool.

The new Power7 processor is designed basing on the chip used in the construction of Roadrunner supercomputer which was number one ranked fastest super computer. The supercomputer being constructed has good node intercommunication as the transfer of data is at a rate of 192GB per second–peak between any two nodes, which thereby makes it useful to organizations like DARPA and the NSF. The Power7 chip is a virtual 32-core processor which boasts eight processing cores in one chip package where each core can execute four tasks. IBM uses a technology called E-DRAM with a total number of transistors of up to 1.2 billion.

IBM is planning to market the Power7 processor in the first half of 2010 and is willing to use the micro processor in sever products which are to be launched.

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