WASHINGTON — Scientists unveiled the world’s fastest supercomputer Monday, a $100 million machine that has performed 1 quad rillion calculations per second in a sustained exercise.
The technology breakthrough was accomplished by engineers from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and IBM on a computer to be used primarily on nuclear-weapons work, including simulating nuclear explosions.
Roadrunner is twice as fast as IBM’s Blue Gene system at California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, itself three times faster than anything else, according to IBM. If each of the world’s 6 billion people worked on hand-held computers for 24 hours a day, it would take them 46 years to do what Roadrunner can do in a day. The Associated Press
