What is the worlds most powerful and/or fastest computer?
On March 25, 2005, IBM’s Blue Gene/L prototype became the fastest supercomputer in a single installation using its 65536 nodes to run at 135.5 TFLOPS (1012 FLOPS). The Blue Gene/L is a cluster of nodes, each based on a customized version of IBM’s PowerPC 440 processor with 512MB of local memory. The prototype was developed at IBM’s Rochester, Minnesota facility, but production versions were rolled out to various sites, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). On October 28, 2005 the machine reached 280.6 TFLOPS with 131072 nodes. The LLNL system is expected to achieve at least 360 TFLOPS, and a future update will take it to 0.5 PFLOPS. Before this, a Blue Gene/L fitted with 32,768 nodes managed seven hours of sustained calculating at a 70.7 teraflops—another first. [1] In November of 2005 IBM Blue Gene/L became the number 1 on TOP500’s most powerful supercomputer list and it has held on to this top spot as predicted [2]. In June 2006 LLNL’s 131,072-node machine broke an
