Biggish Blue readies climate supercomputer

BIGGISH BLUE'S latest supercomputer is being assembled at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research.

ITWorld says, IBM is starting to assemble and test the new 12Tflop supercomputer should be working at NCAR's headquarters by February. The computer will be the first of two being built by Biggish Blue for the NCAR next year.

The new hardware, nicknamed Blue Ice, is built around 872 dual-core IBM Power5+ 1.9GHz CPUs in a 10-rack cluster. It is four times more powerful than Bluesky, the IBM supercomputer it will work alongside.

The hardware will be used to investigate global climate change and its potential impact on human activity.

ITWorld helpfully points that one of Blu Ice's racks burns four times more power than a US household.

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