IBM goes nuclear with supercomputer

IBM has unveiled the world's fastest supercomputer, claiming that it's capable of breaking the magic 10 trillion calculations per second barrier.

ASCI White is 1000 times faster than Deep Blue, IBM's earlier supercomputer that beat chess champion Gary Kasparov. It boasts 8192 processors, and requires as much cooling as 765 homes.

The operating system holding the massive cluster together is AIX, Big Blue's own version of Unix. The computer is apparently the size of two basketball courts, and the weight of 17 full-size elephants.

The $110m machine is designed as part of the US Government's Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative, which ultimately aims to build a supercomputer capable of 100 trillion calculations per second.

ASCI White's 12.3 trillion calculations per second will be used to simulate nuclear weapons tests, following a 1995 directive from the US Government requiring more stringent weapons testing.

"This provides the foundation for the next phase in our race to build the Tera-Scale Facility and achieve 100 trillion calculations per second by 2005," said ASCI programme leader David Nowak.