Energy agency awards supercomputer contract to IBM

The National Nuclear Security Administration awarded a contract to IBM on Tuesday to procure the world's most powerful supercomputer.

NNSA said the new IBM Sequoia supercomputer, 10 times more powerful than any in existence, has more processing juice than any of the current top 500 supercomputers.

As part of the same contract, IBM also will deliver a supercomputer named Dawn to the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2009.

Neither NNSA nor IBM disclosed the value of the contract.

NNSA now uses supercomputers to model nuclear explosions. Previously, the government conducted bomb or missile warhead tests, but stopped that practice in 1992. Administrator Thomas D'Agostino said Sequoia and Dawn "will provide NNSA with the capabilities needed to resolve time-urgent and complex scientific problems, ensuring the viability of the nation's nuclear deterrent into the future. This endeavor will also help maintain U.S. leadership in high-performance computing and promote scientific discovery."

Supercomputers are becoming smaller and more powerful. David Turek, IBM's vice president of Deep Computing, said the Sequoia packs the power of 2 million personal computers and will be housed in a facility at Lawrence Livermore, which is "about the size of a McMansion, 3,000 square feet," he added. Japan's Earth simulator, which went into operation in 2002, is one of the largest supercomputers in the world. But it has only a tiny fraction of Sequoia's power, Turek said. The Earth simulator was stored in a facility the size of a football field, about 45,000 square feet.

Sequoia receives a power boost from five networks -- instead of only the one used in other supercomputers -- which link together all the chips, according to Turek. That feature "rapidly speeds up capability and performance," he noted.

Sequoia, which is expected to be operational in 2012, runs on 1.5 million embedded IBM PowerPC chips and uses the Linux operating system and embedded software to manage communications among the chips, Turek said.

While Sequoia's primary function will be to support NNSA's nuclear role, Meisner said he could envision the supercomputer being used to study turbulence inside a jet engine, leading to more fuel-efficient aircraft.

A supercomputer with the power of Sequoia also could improve weather forecasting. IBM researchers say the machine could allow analysts to predict local weather events that affect areas 100 meters to 1 kilometer in size. Currently, forecasters can predict weather within a 10-kilometer radius. Tornadoes and other major weather events could be confined to a few kilometers, enabling local forecasters to accurately map their paths, IBM said in a press release.