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IBM Roadrunner

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Roadrunner is the name given to a next-generation supercomputer to be built at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The computer is designed for a performance level of 1.6 petaflops peak and to be the world's first TOP500 Linpack sustained 1.0 petaflops system. IBM will build the computer for the US Department of Energy. It will be a hybrid design with more than 16,000 AMD Opteron cores (~2200 IBM x3755 4U servers, each holding four dual core Opterons, connected by Infiniband) to an equal number of Cell microprocessors resulting in a 1:1 ratio of Cell cores to Opteron cores. The processor architecture used will be the Sony/Toshiba/IBM (STI) Cell Broadband Engine (Cell B. E.) processor which is also used in the PlayStation 3 game console. A newer generation of the Cell will be used, which will be able to do two double precision calculations in its 128 bit registers at full speed with a peak of slightly greater than 100 GFlop/s in double precision. The Roadrunner will use the Red Hat Linux operating system. The Cell processors will come as IBM Cell blades and be directly-connected using InfiniBand to the x3755 Opteron nodes. When completed, it will be the world's most powerful computer, and cover approximately 12,000 square feet (1,100 square meters). It is expected to be operational in 2008. The US Department of Energy plans to use the computer for simulating how nuclear materials age and whether the aging nuclear weapon arsenal of the United States is safe and reliable. Other uses for the supercomputer include the sciences, financial, automotive and aerospace industries.