New Super-Duper Computer from IBM

IBM Corp.has announced a new RS/6000 SP Unix-based supercomputer with new high-speed switching and clustering technology that will let it execute 12.3 trillion operation per second - or one online transaction for every human being in the world per minute.

Dubbed "ASCI White," it will be taking up residence in an area the size of two basketball courts at a Department of Energy lab to do nuclear explosion simulations. The computer required copper CPUs that burn more coolly than the usual aluminum based ones, and a new switch and special clustering code to let its 512 separate nodes communicate at super-high speeds.

The clustering software runs the entire system is if it were one server; the new switch is three times faster than the one IBM currently offers on its existing SP machines. http://www.ibm.com.