IBM’s ‘Sequoia’ beats Japan’s ‘K machine’, running 1.55 times faster while being 15 per cent more energy efficient Computer – which is nearly 300,00 times faster than machines from 20 years ago – will be used for nuclear studies

By Eddie Wrenn

PUBLISHED: 12:06 EST, 18 June 2012 | UPDATED: 13:11 EST, 18 June 2012

In the super-computing league table, the U.S. has reclaimed ‘top spot’ from China.

IBM’s Sequoia computer, which is 1.55 times faster than China’s previous record-breaker, the Fujitsu K Computer, was installed and switched on at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

Throwing evidence behind Moore’s Law – which dictates that computers get twice as powerful and twice as small every 18 months – the new super-computer is a powerful machine.

It can perform – in less than a second – calculations which would take the super computers of 1993 three days to solve.

In fact, the IBM team say it is 273,930 times more powerful than the 1993 machine – called the CM-5/1024 and created by American firm Thinking Machines.

The Sequoia: This grey slab is just part the most powerful computer on the planet, and will be used in nuclear power research, with perhaps a game or two of chess on the side

The BBC reports that Sequoia is capable of calculating, in one hour, ‘what otherwise would take 6.7 billion people using hand calculators 320 years.’

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