WIREDGOV

Funding from STFC has helped IBM and researchers from the University of Edinburgh and Columbia University to develop the most energy efficient supercomputers in the world. A prototype of IBM's next generation Blue Gene supercomputer has been named top of the latest 'Green500 List (link opens in a new window)' and STFC funded part of its cost.

The list includes supercomputers from China to Germany and the United States that are being used for a variety of applications such as astronomy, climate prediction and pharmaceutical research.

An academic team from the Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics in the University of Edinburgh and from the Physics Department at Columbia University have collaborated with IBM over the last three years on the chip design of IBM's prototype computer in a unique industrial-academic collaboration.

The Edinburgh system is funded by STFC and will be installed in the Advanced Computing Facility at the University of Edinburgh next year and will be applied to Quantum Chromodynamic (theoretical physics)* simulation. The Columbia University design effort was carried out in partnership with the RIKEN BNL Research Center which, together with the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), will fund a system to be installed at BNL.

More details can be found on the University of Edinburgh website (link opens in a new window) and on the IBM website (link opens in a new window).

* Please see Wikipedia for further information about quantum chromodynamics (link opens in a new window).