IBM has just switched on the biggest number-crunching beast in private industry. Located at Big Blue's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., the new computer can spit out more than 91 trillion calculations a second. Yes, you read that right: 91 trillion calculations a second, or 91 teraflops, in industry jargon. This incredible speed ranks it as the world's second-fastest supercomputer. The only speedier machine is the mammoth, 367-teraflops system that IBM ( ) is installing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for research on nuclear weapons. Both are based on IBM's innovative BlueGene/L architecture. However, another IBM...
