Tenn. supercomputer running fastest in world for climate change, renewable energy
By Duncan Mansfield
November 17, 2009
At least for the moment, the world's fastest supercomputer is devoted to solving scientific questions that may save the planet -- climate change, renewable energy, new medicines -- rather than advances in nuclear weapons that might blow it up.
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory's high-performance Jaguar XT5 computer, built by Seattle-based Cray Inc., was named Monday as the fastest on the planet in the latest semiannual TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers.
After a $19.9 million upgrade funded with federal economic stimulus money, Jaguar posted a performance speed of 1.759 petaflops or quadrillions of calculations per second.
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