At a speed of 2.3 teraflops, or 2.3 trillion calculations per second,
Oak Ridge National Laboratory's "Cheetah" is the eighth fastest
supercomputer in the world.
ORNL's ranking is on the 2002 list of the world's 500 fastest
supercomputers. Officially released Thursday, the list was compiled by
researchers at the University of Tennessee and the University of
Mannheim in Germany.
"Oak Ridge is among the leaders," said Thomas Zacharia, the lab's
associate director for computing. "I hope we will continue to push
forward."
The No. 1 machine on the list is Japan's NEC Earth Simulator. It runs
about 15 times faster than ORNL's computer, which is officially known
as the IBM Power4.
The Cheetah supercomputer has recently been used to run a new climate
simulation model developed by researchers at the National Center for
Atmospheric Research and ORNL that basically doubles the detail of
previous models.
"That's very significant," said Mike Farrell, director of ORNL's Center
for Global Environmental Studies.
As for the future, lab officials said they will continue working toward
the Cheetah's theoretical top speed of 4.5 teraflops. ORNL's
supercomputer goal is to reach more than 100 teraflops by about
2006.
To view the complete list of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers, go
to www.top500.org
Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or pparson@oakridger.com.
