IBM supercomputer fights bio-terror

IBM has provided the US Department of Defense (DoD) with the third most powerful supercomputer in history to fight biological threats.

Big Blue said that the machine would be used to perform research in the development of a practical vaccine for malaria and other infectious diseases.

The computer, named Blue Ocean, is the most powerful machine the DoD uses, and will also help scientists assemble the "world's most detailed model of ocean waves", the company said.

Blue Ocean can process more than six trillion calculations a second, and cost the DoD's Naval Oceanographic Office around $15m.

The system clusters 37 IBM p690 servers, with a combined 1,184 IBM POWER4 microprocessors, 1.5Tb of memory and about 20Tb of data storage provided by the IBM TotalStorage 7133 Serial Disk System.

Ed Johnson, Naval Oceanographic Office technical director, said: "This is a huge boost in computational capability for the Navy and the DoD.

"High performance computing systems form a computational backbone providing unparalleled capabilities for the daily ocean- and global-scale modelling we perform to support worldwide DoD operations."