Citation
Andrew, A.M. (2000), "Petaflop computer", Kybernetes, Vol. 29 No. 9/10. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.2000.06729iag.004
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2000, MCB UP Limited
Petaflop computer
Petaflop computer
Links from the "Blueeyes" page lead to descriptions of other news items and projects associated with IBM. A particularly interesting project is one to build a computer with the code name "Bluegene", described at the site: http://www.research.ibm.com/news/detail/bluegene.html The announcement was made on 6 December 1999, and the power of the new machine is to be one petaflop, or 1 billion floating-point operations per second.
The new computer will be 500 times as powerful as anything currently existing and 1,000 times faster than the machine which beat Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997. It relies on highly parallel operation, setting a new record in this respect with 1 million units operating in parallel.
The computer is aimed at a "grand challenge" associated with analysis of protein folding, and offering great benefits to biological studies and medicine.