IBM To Develop Fastest Supercomputer in the World

IBM and the U.S. government is teaming up to build the most powerful supercomputer in the world. The new supercomputer named "Sequioa" will be housed in 96 racks, have over 1.6 million processors, 1.6TB of memory, and have performance speeds up to 20 petaflops. To put in perspective of how fast this new supercomputer will be, the current fastest supercomputer is the IBM Roadrunner which clocks in at 1.105 petaflops. The system will contain nearly 100,000 computing nodes and draw six megawatts of power a year, enough to power 500 homes.

The new supercomputer will live at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The system will house nuclear weapon data as well as perform research on energy, genome, climate change, and astronomy. The system will also greatly help weather forecasters as the system will have the ability to predict weather events less than one kilometer across. Current systems will only allow for 10 kilometers.

Pricing of the system as not yet been released but IBM one the bid for the project, beating five other companies. IBM was chosen based on the lower cost and they had a better risk reduction plan, in case something goes wrong.