A publication of the Advanced Simulation & Computing Division, NA-121.2, NNSA Defense Programs
June 2008
NA-ASC-500-08—Issue 7
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Roadrunner Fastest Computer on Earth
On May 26, 2008, the Roadrunner supercomputer achieved the long-sought supercomputing goal of performing more than a thousand trillion operations per second, or petaFLOPS. Roadrunner was built by IBM with funding from the NNSA for Los Alamos National Laboratory. Soon, a caravan of moving vans will transport Roadrunner from IBM to Los Alamos, where it will be installed in the Nicholas C. Metropolis Center for Modeling and Simulation.
Roadrunner is a “hybrid supercomputer,” integrating a new cell-based processor, designed and built by IBM with a traditional microprocessor supplied by AMD. Coupled with programs designed to utilize its unprecedented performance, Roadrunner will foster scientific discovery in many fields, ranging from physical sciences to biology and medicine, and it will provide a petaFLOPS-scale scientific computing capability for the nation’s weapons program. Roadrunner is also rated as very energy efficient, using approximately the same total power as the recently retired Q system, with more than fifty times the performance.
Breaking the petaFLOPS barrier is a major milestone in the supercomputing world. According to Dr. Andrew White, Roadrunner project director at Los Alamos, “This is a remarkable achievement. The science will be even more so.”
Shown here is a small cross section of people who collaborated across many sectors of Los Alamos National Laboratory to make Roadrunner a success. Roadrunner is an example of a project that is such a significant technical challenge that no one person could do it alone.
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