What Is the Fastest Computer Processor Speed?

RoadRunner is currently the most powerful supercomputer and permits the solving of tremendous computing problems using far less power than other machines. Sequoia will be bigger, but is still being built.

History

IBM engineers worked on RoadRunner for six years. Before this, the fastest computers were six times slower. New Sequoia is almost 20 times more powerful.

Potential

RoadRunner achieved a sustained speed of 1 petaflop, only using 1 watt of power per 376 million calculations. Sequoia will do 20 petaflops.

Construction

RoadRunner was constructed like a Sony Playstation, but with 6,948 dual-core chips, 12,960 cell engines and 80 TB of memory. It occupies 6,000 square feet with 57 miles of cable, weighing a half-million pounds. (Sequoia contains 1.6m computer chips.)

Significance

Primarily for the military, Roadrunner also develops biofuels, designs more fuel-efficient cars, finds drug therapies and provides services to finance. Sequoia will simulate nuclear tests and explosions.

Perspective

If 6 billion people all using hand-held computers worked 24/7, it would take them 46 years to complete what RoadRunner does in a day and 920 years to do the same work as Sequoia in the same time.

Locations

RoadRunner is located at the IBM Research Lab in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Sequoia is at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.