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28 October 1998

WORLD'S FASTEST COMPUTER UNVEILED AT WHITE HOUSE OCTOBER 28

(Gore, Richardson in Old Executive Office Building)  (660)
By Jennifer A. Cara
USIA Staff Writer
Washington -- Vice President Al Gore and Secretary of Energy Bill
Richardson unveiled the world's fastest computer at the White House
October 28. It is capable of performing 3.9 trillion calculations per
second, which is more than twice as fast as any other computer in the
world.
The Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in
California and IBM jointly developed the new computer which is called
"Blue Pacific."
Physically located at the Livermore Laboratory, "Blue Pacific" cost
$96 million dollars to produce under the joint research contract.
"Over the last 50 years," Gore said at a press conference in the Old
Executive Office Building, "innovation has accounted for half of our
economic growth -- fueling our new economy and building a stronger,
healthier, and more productive future for our children. That is why I
am pleased to announce the world's fastest computer, which will lead
to advances in, and greater understanding of, medicine, manufacturing,
aviation safety, and global climate change."
The supercomputer can simulate the physics of a nuclar explosion, thus
providing a method to assess the safety, security, and reliablity of
nuclear weapons and eliminating the need for much underground nuclear
testing.
"Blue Pacific" is the second in a series of five generations of
high-performance computers planned by the Department of Energy, with
the goal of 100 trillion calculations per second (teraops) by 2004.
The computer's specialized knowledge is key to maintaining US
non-proliferation goals.
Some facts about the computer recently released by the Department of
Energy include these:
"Blue Pacific" is powered by more than 5800 PowerPC processors and
uses 2.6 trillion bytes of memory. It is connected by over four miles
of cable. It contains more than 25 trillion transistors.
"It is 15,000 times faster and has roughly 80,000 times the memory of
the average desktop PC. It contains more than 75 trillion bytes of
disk storage capacity, or more than enough to hold all the information
contained in the more than 17 million books of the Library of
Congress. To put this into context, nearly 37 years ago, when John
Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth, the
state-of-the-art IBM computer was the 7030 stretch. 'Blue Pacific' is
40 million times faster."
Gore said that it would take a person with a hand calculator 63,000
years to perform the same number of calculations that this computer
can calculate in one second.
Energy Secretary Richardson said, "We've broken the 'speed barrier'
and we're going to keep accelerating. The Department of Energy needs
these high speed computers to help ensure the safety, security, and
reliability of our nuclear stockpile without nuclear testing."
"Blue Pacific" is actually two machines. There is an "open" side,
which has 892 billion calculations per second (gigaops), and is
accessible to university research partners for unclassified ASCI. The
"closed" side operates at 3.9 teraops and is for use on computing the
classified stewardship stockpile of the Department of Energy.
The Vice President also announced two bills that President Clinton
signed October 28.
The first bill is about protecting copyrights in the digital era and
is based on two international treaties which created "international
standards for intellectual property protection in the digital
environment and protects U.S. copyrighted works, musical performances,
and sound recordings from international piracy."
In addition to implementing the two treaties, the new law will
preserve fair use and limit infringement liability for providers of
basic communication services. This is a step toward making commerce
between businesses and consumers safer.
The second bill created the Next Generation Internet -- "a federal
research and development initiative that will connect over 100
universities at speeds up to 1,000 times faster than today's Internet,
and establish the foundation for the networks and applications,
including telemedicine and distance learning."