Europe's biggest supercomputer goes into operation
Munich - Europe's fastest supercomputer covers an area of 500 square metres, weighs 100 tons and performs at a maximum rate of three Petaflops.
The SuperMUC computer, built by IBM and installed at the Leibniz computing centre (LRZ) in Garching near Munich, is able to complete 1,000 trillion - or 10 to the power of 15 - calculations per second, putting it in the fourth spot in the world in the computing stakes.
IBM compares the performance of the SuperMUC, which has just gone into operation, with 3 billion people using pocket calculators each carrying out 1 million calculations per second.
Arndt Bode, who heads the LRZ management board, compares it to a machine hammering in nails with a head measuring 1 millimetre across to represent each calculation. "The machine could go around the world 70,000 times a second," he says.
German Research Minister Annette Schavan says: "Supercomputers are a key to finding answers to the pressing problems of the 21st century."//DPA
