[extropy-chat] IBM's Blue Gene

[Damien Broderick]

> 
><http://app2.topiksolutions.com/ct_track.ts?c=36285&u=1612124&i=2942&ct_attrib=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bioitworld.com%2Farchive%2F030805%2Fbs_ventured.html>Ajay 
>Royyuru, Head of IBM's Computational Biology Center, leads a team of 35
>researchers in projects ranging from structural biology and protein 
>science to functional
>genomics and systems biology.  A key platform in these endeavors is of 
>course Blue Gene,
>IBM's vaunted supercomputer, which leaped to the head of the 
><http://app2.topiksolutions.com/ct_track.ts?c=36286&u=1612124&i=2942&ct_attrib=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.top500.org%2Fsublist%2FSystem.php%3Fid%3D7101>Top 
>500 computer charts
>last Fall. Some time this summer, IBM expects to complete construction of 
>Blue Gene/L
>for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The machine 
>will have a
>peak speed of 360 Teraflops - a fivefold increase over its current 
>processing speed, as
>released last month.

So -- thereafter, less than two more doublings to petaflop.

As I recall, the 1997 benchmark mentioned in the first edition of THE SPIKE 
was a teraflop. In the revised 2001 edition, I noted that Blue Gene was 
expected to be at petaflop by late 2004. The reality is impressively close.

Damien Broderick