Energy debuts world’s fastest supercomputer

The world's fastest supercomputer is now fully operational at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The computer, known as ASCI White, made its official debut Wednesday as representatives from its creator, IBM Corp., looked on. The $110 million supercomputer is being used to simulate nuclear explosions for Energy's Advanced Strategic Computing Initiative, an offshoot of the department's Stockpile Stewardship program, which monitors the status of the nation's nuclear weapons. "The point is to help Energy scientists maintain the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile," said Surjit Chana, vice president of high performance computing at IBM. "Accurate simulation is absolutely critical for the [Advanced Strategic Computing Initiative] to retain confidence in the arsenal." ASCI White is three times faster than the combined speed of the next three most powerful supercomputers in the world. It is a 12.3 teraflop system, meaning it can make 12.3 trillion calculations per second. IBM officials said it would take a human 10 million years to perform that many calculations on a calculator. Chana noted that IBM had exceeded Energy's request for a 10 teraflop system. The massive computer contains 8,192 processors and takes up a space the size of two basketball courts. Moving ASCI White from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where it was made, to Lawrence Livermore took 28 tractor-trailer trucks.