Supercomputer with awesome processing power

Among the breed of warehouse-sized calculators known as supercomputers it will be the new king: an almighty machine capable of performing twenty thousand trillion calculations every second.

IBM is developing the Sequoia supercomputer for the US Government, a machine with the processing power of two million laptops.

Today’s fastest supercomputers would seem sluggish in comparison, while past supercomputers would resemble so many rusting Commodore 64s in school jumble sales.

Sequoia, due to be installed in the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California in 2011, is to perform the calculations and simulations required to test America’s nuclear stockpile.

In its spare time it may be required to investigate the human genome, predict the possible outcomes of climate change, chart the path of tornados and discover new sources of energy.

According to IBM, given an entire day, the Sequoia could match the output that 120 billion men with calculators might achieve in 50 years. The company estimates that it will be more powerful than today’s 500 most powerful supercomputers combined, and 15 times faster than the fastest of their kind.

The main purpose of the Sequoia programme will be to allow nuclear scientists to determine whether weapons will work as required under the National Nuclear Security Administration stockpile stewardship programme.

“The problem we have with the nuclear stockpile is similar to one you might have at home with a car you’ve kept in the garage for 20 to 30 years,” Mark Seager, assistant department head for advanced technology at Lawrence Livermore, told PC World. “How do you carefully maintain the car so that when you go to start the car, you can be very confident it will start?”