National Center for Computational Sciences

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory has purchased its first IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer, Thomas Zacharia, the lab’s associate director for computing and computational sciences, confirmed to The Oak Ridger.

The low-power, high-density computer is ideally suited for materials and biological calculations, he said.

“We are excited about the possibility of new scientific discoveries using this machine,” Zacharia said.

The Blue Gene/P supercomputer is the second generation of the Blue Gene supercomputer, and it is at least seven times more energy-efficient than any other supercomputer, according to a press release from Text 100 Public Relations.

ORNL’s new system was accepted in late September, and Zacharia said it is one of the first shipped by IBM.

He said the computer has about 8,000 processors in two small cabinets.

A news release stated the supercomputer will be capable of more than 27 trillion calculations a second — or 27 teraflops.

The Blue Gene/P system will allow ORNL to answer crucial questions about magnetoelectronics and spintronics, among other things.

Source: OAKRIDGER.COM