The National Science Foundation might need IBMs services to build the world’s fastest supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The information was accidently placed on a federal government website last week, which was later removed from the site.
The supercomputing machine might cost a whooping $200 million to build and an additional $400 million will be spent on its maintenance during its five-year life time. This heavy expenditure has been condemned by many.
Many other supercomputers and even some state governments were looking forward to be awarded with the contract and the decision to hire IBM for the same has raised several concerns among computer scientists who are involved in building high-performance machines.
When built, this computer will be able to process one thousand trillion mathematical calculations per second. Talking in more computing terms the computer will have a performance of a Petaflop. Since the machine will be able to perform at such a high speed it will find some applications in the field of advanced scientific research projects such as simulating the effects of global warming.
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Via: Boston
