An IBM-built computer that has topped the list of the worlds 500 most powerful supercomputers has widened its lead in the latest ranking released Monday.

The computer named Blue Gene/L, deployed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has doubled its performance to 280.6 trillion calculations per second (teraflops), up from 136.8 teraflops from the list released in June.

The system, which is used to study the U.S. nuclear stockpile and perform other research, was officially completed this summer after it was doubled in size. Researchers expect it will hold the top spot for the foreseeable future.

This is as fast as this will get under the contract we have, but its not limited to be only this fast, said Dave Turek, vice president of deep computing at IBM. If Livermore were to have an interest in taking it bigger, we could do that.

Teraflops ? (trillion calculations per second) …Well I guess it makes my trusty computer redundant, Im still calculating in minutes….Anyway read on courtesy of ap.org as this is a fascinating story.