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22nd Edition of TOP500 List of World’s Fastest Supercomputers Released MANNHEIM, Germany; KNOXVILLE, Tenn.; & BERKELEY, Calif. – In what has become a much-anticipated event in the world of high-performance computing, the 22nd edition of the “TOP500” list of the world’s fastest supercomputers was released today (November 16, 2003). The Earth Simulator supercomputer retains the number one position with its Linpack benchmark performance of 35.86 Tflop/s (“teraflops” or trillions of calculations per second). It was built by NEC and installed last year at the Earth Simulator Center in Yokohama, Japan. The list of cluster systems in the TOP10 has grown...

IBM ASIC Technology Helps Power New Cray X1 Supercomputer 2 Jan 2003, 09:07am ET - - - - - 800 IBM ASIC Chips Feature Total Gate Count of 7.5 Billion IBM today announced that it is the sole application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) technology provider for the new Cray (NASDAQ: CRAY) X1 supercomputer, which is now being shipped to customers. The Cray supercomputer contains 800 IBM ASIC chips, designed by Cray exclusively for the X1 and manufactured by IBM. The chips feature gate counts as high as 14.2 million, an average gate count of about 9.5 million, and a...

THE first supercomputers to approach and even surpass the processing power of the human brain are to be built by IBM, under a £184 million contract announced by the US Government yesterday. ASCI Purple and Blue Gene/L will be the fastest and most powerful machines built, with a combined capacity equal to the 500 best of today’s computers. ASCI Purple, which will be built first and used to simulate nuclear tests, will be able to complete 100 thousand billion calculations per second — a speed known as 100 teraflops that some scientists say is comparable to the human brain. Blue...

IBM has signed what it hopes will be its biggest supercomputer deal ever: a contract for up to $224 million to improve the National Weather Service (news - web sites)'s forecasting technology. • Ultraportable notebook roundup • Find Web-hosting solutions • Tech Update goes inside ERP • Go wireless at ZDNet  Sign up for the free ZDNet News Dispatch:     (CNET Networks Privacy Policy) IBM Global Services will operate the 2,572-processor machine, to be installed in an IBM facility in Gaithersburg, Md., IBM and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA) said Friday. By July 2003, the system will completely take...