Unseen World!

IBM Roadrunner is a supercomputer built by IBM at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA. Currently the world’s fastest computer, the US$133-million Roadrunner is designed for a peak performance of 1.7 petaflops, achieving 1.026 on May 25, 2008, and to be the world’s first TOP500 Linpack sustained 1.0 petaflops system. It is a one-of-a-kind supercomputer, built from off the shelf parts, with many novel design features.

In November 2008, it reached a top performance of 1.456 petaflops, retaining its top spot in the TOP500 list. It is also the fourth-most energy-efficient supercomputer in the world on the Supermicro Green500 list, with an operational rate of 444.94 megaflops per watt of power used.

When you’re looking to set a record this is how you do it. Not only has IBM’s Roadrunner supercomputer come on-line, it’s now the world’s fastest — twice as fast as the old BluGene/L champ — and churning through 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second. The $133 million supercomputer achieved the milestone with the help of 12,960 “improved” Cell processors (yes, like those powering your PS3) and a smaller number of AMD Opteron processors — 116,640 processor cores in total. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending upon your perspective), Roadrunner is for military use only so you’ll have to solve the traveling salesman problem on your own time. While not quite into Exaflop territory, we’re definitely on the way.