Supercomputer to Aid U.S. Navy

W A S H I N G T O N, Aug. 3 -- Maritime accidents like the one in the movieThe Perfect Storm may be easier to prevent with a newsupercomputer just bought by the Pentagon, IBM says.

International Business Machines Corp. announced today thatthe $18 million computer, code-named “Blue Wave,” has beeninstalled at the Naval Oceanographic Office computer center atMississippi’s Stennis Space Center.

Steve Adamec, the center’s director, said the ability of the IBMRS/6000 SP to do modeling and simulation will help in the designingof aircraft and ships and will create models of the ocean’s waves,currents and temperature to forecast weather patterns better.

Solving ‘Most Difficult Problems’

IBM said the computer is the most powerful supercomputer everbought by the Defense Department, and the fourth-fastest supercomputerin the world.

“The RS/6000 SP extends NAVOCEANO’s ability to solve theDepartment of Defense’s most difficult computer problems,” PeterUngaro, an IBM vice president, said in a statement.

Computers are ranked on a standardized speed test that measureshow many calculations they perform in a second. This one was judgedthe fourth most powerful in early June by groups at the Universityof Tennessee and the University of Mannheim in Germany, whichpublish the rankings twice a year. Used in conjunction with otherequipment at the Navy center, the computer will perform 3 trillionoperations per second, IBM said.

The three ranked faster were Intel’s ASCI Red at Sandi NationalLaboratory in New Mexico; IBM’s ASCI Blue Pacific, LawrenceLivermore National Laboratory, Calif.; and SGI’s ASCI Blue Mountainat Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico.

But the list is likely to be revised at the next ranking, andthe new computer dropped to fifth place, since IBM announced inlate June that it had built the most powerful supercomputer in theworld, able to perform 12.3 trillion operations per second.