All good things must always come to an end, as nothing is permanent except death and some say, taxes. Well, IBM’s Roadrunner, what was once the world’s fastest supercomputer, has arrived at the end of its distinguished life, as it will be decommissioned Sunday. The IBM Roadrunner cost $121 million to build, and was tucked away at one of the nation’s premier nuclear weapons research laboratories that was located in northern New Mexico.
The simple reason given to the masses would be the scourge that affects us all – age. After all, the world of supercomputing is one that evolves all too rapidly, and the Roadrunner is no longer at the forefront of the race, where something smaller, faster, and more energy efficient without raking up the final bill has already hit the industry. However, the IBM Roadrunner can still lay claim to be one of the 25 fastest supercomputers in the world at this point in time.”
If there was just one thing that you could attribute to the IBM Roadrunner, it would be this. Back in 2008, the Roadrunner proved to be the first supercomputer in the world to surpass the once elusive petaflop barrier by processing slightly more than a quadrillion mathematical calculations per second, now how about that?
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