The Top500 List of supercomputers now lists the United States as having the fastest supercomputer in the world, the first time it can claim that record since 2009. The 96 racks of equipment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California holds the IBM “Sequoia” supercomputer.
It is capable of 16.32 petaflops which means that in one hour, it could calculate what is approximately equivalent to giving a calculator to 6.7 billion people (slightly less than the population of the world) and giving them 320 years to make the equivalent calculations.
Dave Turek, vice president of high performance computing systems at IBM said that the Sequoia system is about 1/10 the size of Fujitsu’s K computer (the previous fastest supercomputer), uses considerably less energy and has “remarkable reliability.”
He said, “The computer can do two billion calculations per second with 1 watt of energy. If you look at your PC today, that microprocessor in there is probably consuming 100 to 150 watts.” Read the full Washington Post article, IBM’s ‘Sequoia’ unseats Fujitsu; tops the list as fastest supercomputer.
