Beep! Beep! The Roadrunner is coming

IBM is at it again, trying to build the world’s most powerful supercomputer at a US government laboratory that could potentially be up to 4 times as fast as IBM’s very own BlueGene/L. The new machine has been codenamed Roadrunner, and this computer will follow a hybrid design that uses both conventional supercomputer processors as well as the new Cell chip design. It is hoped that the Roadrunner will hit petaflop speeds, maxing out at 1.6 thousand trillion calculations per second. In comparison, the BlueGene/L is only capable of a trillion calculations per second. The Roadrunner has a projected completion date of 2008 and will take up approximately 12,000 square feet of floor space.