[1st-mile-nm] LANL/IBM-Developed Roadrunner Is World's Fastest Computer

Mon Jun 9 13:30:49 PDT 2008

LANL/IBM-Developed Roadrunner Is World's Fastest Computer

Monday, June 09, 2008 ??
By H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press?

WASHINGTON ? Scientists today unveiled the world's fastest supercomputer, a
$100 million machine that for the first time has performed 1,000 trillion
calculations per second in a sustained exercise.?  The technology
breakthrough was accomplished by engineers from the Los Alamos National
Laboratory and the IBM Corp. on a computer to be used primarily on nuclear
weapons work, including simulating nuclear explosions.?

The computer, named Roadrunner, is twice as fast as IBM's Blue Gene system at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which itself is three times faster than
any of the world's other supercomputers, according to IBM.?

"The computer is a speed demon. It will allow us to solve tremendous problems,"
said Thomas D'Agostino, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration,
which oversees nuclear weapons research and maintains the warhead stockpile.?

But officials said the computer also could have a wide range of other
applications in civilian engineering, medicine and science, from developing
biofuels and designing more fuel efficient cars to finding drug therapies and
providing services to the financial industry.?

To put the computer's speed in perspective, if every one of the 6 billion people
on earth used a hand-held computer and worked 24 hours a day it would take them
46 years to do what the Roadrunner computer can do in a single day.?  The IBM
and Los Alamos engineers worked six years on the computer technology.?  Some
elements of the Roadrunner can be traced back to popular video games, said
David Turek, vice president of IBM's supercomputing programs. In some ways, he
said, it's "a very souped-up Sony PlayStation 3."?

 "We took the basic chip design (of a PlayStation) and advanced its capability,"
said Turek.?  But the Roadrunner supercomputer is nothing like a video
game.?

The interconnecting system occupies 6,000 square feet with 57 miles of fiber
optics and weighs 500,000 pounds. Although made from commercial parts, the
computer consists of 6,948 dual-core computer chips and 12,960 cell engines,
and it has 80 terabytes of memory.?  The cost: $100 million.?

Turek said the computer in a two-hour test on May 25 achieved a "petaflop" speed
of sustained performance, something no other computer had ever done. It did so
again in several real applications involving classified nuclear weapons work
this past weekend.?  "This is a huge and remarkable achievement," said Turek
in a conference call with reporters.?

A "flop" is an acronym meaning floating-point-operations per second. One
petaflop is 1,000 trillion operations per second. Only two years ago, there
were no actual applications where a computer achieved 100 teraflops ? a tenth
of Roadrunner's speed ? said Turek, noting that the tenfold advancement came
over a relatively short time.?

The Roadrunner computer, now housed at the IBM research laboratory in
Poughkeepsie, N.Y., will be moved next month to the Los Alamos National
Laboratory in New Mexico.?  Along with other supercomputers, it will be key
"to assure the safety and security of our (weapons) stockpile," said
D'Agostino. With its extraordinary speed it will be able to simulate the
performances of a warhead and help weapons scientists track warhead aging, he
said.?  But the computer ? and more so the technology that it represents
? marks a future for a wide range of other research and uses. "The technology
will be pronounced in its employment across industry in the years to come,"
predicted Turek, the IBM executive.?

Michael Anastasio, director of the Los Alamos lab, said that for the first six
months the computer will be used in unclassified work including activities not
related to the weapons program. After that about three-fourths of the work will
involve weapons and other classified government activities.?  Anastasio said
the computer, in its unclassified applications, is expected to be used not only
by Los Alamos scientists but others as well. He said there can be broad
applications such as helping to develop a vaccine for the HIV virus, examine
the chemistry in the production of cellulosic ethanol, or to understand the
origins of the universe.?

And Turek said the computer represents still another breakthrough, particularly
important in these days of expensive energy: It is an energy miser compared
with other supercomputers, performing 376 million calculations for every watt
of electricity used. ??

-- 
Richard Lowenberg
1st-Mile Institute
P.O. Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504
505-989-9110;   505-603-5200 cell
rl at 1st-mile.com  www.1st-mile.com

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