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IBM Roadrunner dethroaned as worlds most powerful computer

In 2008, the IBM Roadrunner was featured on this blog as the then world’s fastest computer. Now, according to the latest semiannual TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, the “Jaguar” takes first place. With a staggering peak speed of 2.33 petaflops (over two thousand trillion calculations per second), “Jaguar,” located at Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) in the US, is now the world’s fastest supercomputer. Jaguar is devoted to scientific research to the benefit of the planet, such as climate change, renewable energy, new medicines and the like.

The U.S. Department of Energy owns both Jaguar and Roadrunner, but uses them for different purposes. Jaguar is an “open science” tool for peer-reviewed research on a wide range of subjects, wheras Roadrunner is devoted to the complex and classified evaluation of U.S. nuclear weapons.

Below is a picture of Jaguar. Visit the US National Center for Computational Sciences for Jaguar’s technical specifications and more pictures.

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World's fastest computer

A USA government computer in New Mexico is the first supercomputer to perform at one petaflop (one thousand trillion calculations per second). Designed and built by IBM, the Roadrunner uses both traditional computer chips and the Cell Broadband Engine. The cell processor was originally designed for video game consoles such as the Sony Playstation 3.

Roadrunner will be used primarily to ensure the safety and reliability of the US nuclear weapons stockpile, and it will also do research into astronomy, energy, human genome science and climate change.

Roadrunner’s petaflop performance is roughly equivalent to the combined computing power of 100,000 of today’s fastest laptop computers. That’s a stack of laptops 2.4 km high. It would take the entire population of the earth, each working a handheld calculator at the rate of one second per calculation, more than 46 years to do what Roadrunner can do in one day.

Check out the Fact Sheet & Background and the US Department of Energy Press Release.

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