The fastest computer on Earth just got a whole lot faster. According to data gathered by the Top500 list (www.top500.org), IBM’s Blue Gene/L supercomputer, which runs at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, has dramatically extended its lead over competitors by achieving speeds of 280.6 trillion floating-point operations per second (teraflops)—more than double the 136.8-teraflop speeds the system clocked in June. The achievement, along with other advancements from supercomputers in the U.S., mark the completion of a ten-year to develop supercomputers for entry-level simulations that support a future free from nuclear testing. Blue Gene/L is primarily used to simulate and evaluate the safety and security of the nation’s nuclear weapons. Until 2004, Japan’s Earth Simulator had spent years ranked as the fastest computer in the world. It has a maximum speed of 35.86 teraflops

DAMN!!!!!!!!!!!! thats fast... but there is no use to this to the normal consumer let alone the cost for one of these... either way if you have to ask for the price you cant afford it lol...

Who said that these super computers are no use to normal man?

Here are some of their uses to the entire human race

* Since they can simulate the dangerous Nuclear Explosions, they save this earth and the life on it from those harmful radiations.

* They are used to generate the graphics and special effects the common man sees in the movies.

* They help in inventing new drugs for saving human life.

* They help in launching and monitoring the satellites and rockets without which, htese modern age communication will not be possible.

This list goes on. So the supercomputers do involve in changing the comman mans life.
The only hting that comman man lacks is he cannot use it directly and even not allowed to see ot touch it.

Blue Gene?

Is it the descendant of Blue Deep ? The first supercomputer to beat a Chess Grandmaster? ^_~

I think what he means is that this super computer is definitely not affordable to the ordinary human like you and me. Unless we are working in a profession which requires instant realtime effects, we won't be getting near these type of super computers. But nonetheless, this is a really amazing computer.

A super computer, dang where can i get my hands on one of those. Of course we regular people won't be able to buy one, even if they sold one it would probably cost 10,000 bucks! But, why would I want one. My computer is just fine as it is! And nobody really needs that much GB's and memory in their computer, Heck, I don't even need the 2GB harddrive mine came with let alone the amount that the super computer is said to hold. The super computer should be used for very improtant things that require many many megabytes to complete that would crash a regular computer that most folks have. Anyway, the comptuer I have is fine, but having the super computer would be something that I would would be happy to have in my possession, but nothing that I truly need or have to have!

probably more like 10 billion bucks
and whoa lol i didn't even know they sold 2 GB Harddrives...

DAMN!!! I am suprised... but again I think with the technology that we're at right now, I think we're a bit behind... but reading this article and doing some research, that stuff is pretty interesting.

*Hope those kinds of super-computers become for home use in the near future .

Just one questoin: what's a teraflop? I've never heard of the work before, but it must be fast because it's got tera in the word.