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IBM computer uses PS3 chips to break speed record

US military, IBM creates world's fastest computer

By | 09 June 08

The US military and IBM have developed a supercomputer that has smashed through the petraflop barrier. The Roadrunner is believed to be the fastest computer on earth.

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The Roadrunner supercomputer cost around $133m to build.

Roadrunner is made up 116,640 processor cores, 12,960 of which are modified Cell parallel processors designed for Sony's PlayStation 3. There are also some AMD Opteron chips. Doubling the speed of previous record holder IBM BlueGene/L, Roadrunner can process 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second.

Roadrunner was built to be used by the US military to simulate the potential launch behaviour of its ageing nuclear arsenal.

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