IBM's Roadrunner tops world supercomputer list

IBM's Roadrunner tops world supercomputer list
It's twice as energy-efficient as the #2 computer

IBM dominates TOP500
The 32nd listing of the TOP500 Supercomputers was recently announced in Austin, Texas. IBM garnered a slew of supercomputing accolades. Here are a few:

Most systems in TOP20 with 6 (HP: 3, Cray: 5)
Most systems in TOP50 with 21 (42%) (HP: 4)
Most systems in TOP100 with 33 (33%) (HP: 18)
The 20 most power efficient systems are all IBM (also 50 out of top 62).
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IBM has done it again. For the ninth consecutive time, IBM has topped the world's supercomputer list.

Not only is it the fastest computer -- clocked at one quadrillion calculations per second -- but the IBM system built for the "roadrunner project" at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos lab is also nearly two times as energy efficient as the second-place computer.

The TOP500 list also highlights IBM's commitment to energy conservation, as the company swept the top 20 slots in the energy-efficiency category of the TOP500.

How fast is a petaflop?
Roadrunner operates at speeds exceeding one petaflop -- one thousand trillion calculations per second -- or one million billion calculations per second; or one quadrillion calculations per second.


You would need 100,000 of today’s fastest laptop computers -- that’s a stack of laptops 1.5 miles high -- to equal Roadrunner’s amazing performance.

It would take six billion people -– roughly the population of the earth -- with each of us working a handheld calculator, more than 46 years to do what Roadrunner can do in one day.


In the past 10 years, supercomputer power has increased about 1,000 times. If it were possible for cars to improve their gas mileage over the past decade at the same rate that supercomputers have improved their cost and efficiency, we'd be getting 200,000 miles to the gallon today.

The "TOP500 Supercomputer Sites" list is compiled and published by supercomputing experts Jack Dongarra from the University of Tennessee, Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of the Department of Energy's NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim (Germany). Supercomputer rankings for the World's TOP500 Supercomputer Sites are compiled and announced twice each year. IBM has held the No. 1 spot 11 times over the 15-year history of the list -- a feat unmatched by any other company.

Don Grice, Roadrunner's designer, ranked 15th on Silicon.com's "Agenda Setter" rankings for 2008, highlighting 50 of the most influential people in technology.

Roadrunner faces huge tasks
At Los Alamos, approximately 80 percent of Roadrunner's capacity is devoted to national security challenges. It's working to helps ensure the safety and reliability of the United States' nuclear weapons stockpile. It will also tackle research applications in the areas of astronomy, human genome science, and climate change.

Time magazine recently named IBM's Roadrunner to its list of 2008's 50 best inventions -- coming in at No. 10. It joined the ranks of other top inventions such as hybrid electric cars and inventions called "The Orbital Internet" and "Green Crude."