IBM's No.1 system uses half the energy of No.2

IBM tops list in aggregate processing power

Top 20 most energy-efficient systems all from IBM

For a record-setting ninth consecutive time, an IBM (NYSE: IBM) system tookthe No.1 spot in the ranking of the world's most powerful supercomputers.The IBM computer built for the "roadrunner project" at Los Alamos NationalLab -- the first in the world to operate at speeds faster than onequadrillion calculations per second (petaflop) in June 2008 -- remains theworld speed champion.

The latest bi-annual ranking of the World's TOP500 Supercomputer Sites wasreleased today during the International Supercomputing Conference inAustin, Texas. Results show the IBM Los Alamos system, which clocked in at1.105 petaflops, to be roughly twice as energy-efficient as the No.2computer, using about half the total electricity (2.5MW) to maintain thesame levels of petascale computing power.

Indeed, IBM swept the energy-efficiency category -- the TOP20 mostenergy-efficient systems are from IBM.

IBM also had more systems in the TOP50 (21) and the TOP100 (33) than anyother systems maker.

Over the 15-year history of the list, IBM has held the No.1 spot 11 times,a feat unmatched by any other systems vendor.

IBM Systems Set Performance for TOP500

Since November 1999, IBM systems have been the most powerful on the list,contributing more overall horsepower than any other systems vendor. Thetrend continues in November 2008 -- IBM's 188 systems account for about 38percent (6.5 petaflops) of the new TOP500's combined compute power of 16.9petaflops.

The No.4 fastest computer in the world is an IBM® Blue Gene/L system atthe NNSA's Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California, which clocked inat 478.2 teraflops (trillion calculations per second). Team Blue Gene alsoholds the No.5 spot with a 450.3-teraflop performance from the Blue Gene/Psystem housed at the Department of Energy's Argonne National Lab inChicago.

IBM also had the fastest machine in Europe -- the No.11 Blue Gene/P atJuelich Research Center in Germany, running at 180 teraflops. IBM is alsothe brand behind the fastest computers in: Canada, United Kingdom, Spain,Netherlands, Taiwan, South Africa, Israel, Bulgaria and Slovenia.

IBM supercomputers tackle world's Grand Challenges, from genetic medicineto the hunt for new energy

IBM provides a wide variety of systems and software technology to thesupercomputing market, more than any other vendor. The company's innovativeHPC solutions have created a new scientific force for tackling the world'sgrand challenges around climate science, the hunt for new sources ofenergy, creating new gene-based medicines, and have made significantcontributions to basic scientific inquiry in physics and biology.

IBM is also leading the move to design all-new hybrid systems -- such asthe roadrunner project -- that combine different types of processors forbetter performance and energy efficiency. IBM is currently building a360-teraflop hybrid cluster for the University of Toronto, for example, adeal which will pair one of the world's largest Power6® clusters withIBM's new iDataPlex® platform (x86) to create an extremely flexible4000-node supercomputer capable of running a diverse range of software athigh levels of performance. Starting in 2009, Canadian scientists plan touse the system to create new methods of medical imaging, among other uses.Part way through installation, the computer has already debuted at No.53 onthe new TOP500.

"It's an honor to hold the record for the world's most powerful computer,but what is critical is building supercomputers that help advance theglobal economy and society at large," said David Turek, VP of DeepComputing at IBM. "We pioneered energy-smart supercomputer designs withBlue Gene in 2000 and build substantially on that heritage each year to thebenefit of science and industry. We apply our lessons learned and theinnovation that comes from these efforts to IBM's commercial systemsbusiness."

The Era of Blue Gene

IBM's chart-topping performance since 1999 has been enabled by thecompany's innovative Blue Gene system which uses low-power processors tocreate ever faster performance for users who have dominated the upperportions of TOP500 rankings going back to 2004.

Since 2004, more than 300 racks worth of Blue Gene systems -- 2,182teraflops of compute power -- have been in near-constant use by nearly 40of the world's leading research agencies. Blue Gene is changing the wayresearch is done, elevating the computational component of scientificinquiry to new importance. The Blue Gene system at Lawrence LivermoreNational Laboratory has itself been responsible for breakthroughs inphysics and materials science, among others that have been lauded on thecovers of six prominent professional journals in the past four years --twice in Nature.

About the roadrunner project. Built by IBM for the NNSA and housed at itsLos Alamos National Laboratory, the petaflop-smashing "roadrunner project"system unveiled in June 2008 gets its world-leading power from a hybridblending of 12,960 IBM PowerXCell 8i Cell Broadband Engine(TM) processors-- derived from chips that power today's most popular videogame consolesand 6,948 AMD Opteron Dual-Core processors. The Opteron chips perform basiccompute functions, freeing the IBM® PowerXCell 8i chips for themath-intensive calculations that are their specialty. Press release here:http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/24405.wss

The "TOP500 Supercomputer Sites" is compiled and published bysupercomputing experts Jack Dongarra from the University of Tennessee;Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of the Department of Energy'sNERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Hans Meuer of theUniversity of Mannheim (Germany). The entire list can be viewed atwww.top500.org.

IBM's expertise in building large-scale, energy-smart hardware is alsoreflected on the "Green500" list of the world's most energy-efficientsupercomputers. IBM has all of the top 10; 24 of the top 25; and 76 of thetop 100 systems on the current Green500 list. (www.green500.org)

For more information about IBM supercomputing, visithttp://www-03.ibm.com/servers/deepcomputing/

IBM, Blue Gene, and IBM PowerXcell 8i are trademarks or registeredtrademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the UnitedStates, other countries, or both.

Cell Broadband Engine is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.in the United States, other countries, or both and is used underlicense therefrom.

Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marksof others.

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Contact:Michael CorradoIBM Media Relations914-766-4635mcorrado@us.ibm.com