By Enterprise Innovation Staff | Jun 11, 2008

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IBM's new Roadrunner supercomputer is twice as fast as the previous top-ranked high-speed computer - but it is also energy-efficient, according to Big Blue.

The $100 million machine can operate at one petaflop (one thousand trillion calculations per second), but requires just 3.9 megawatts of power and delivers 376 million calculations per watt, says IBM.

IBM expects Roadrunner to place among the top energy-efficient systems later in June when the official "Green 500" list of supercomputers is issued.

The Roadrunner, commissioned by the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, is the world's first  "hybrid" supercomputer, based on the Cell Broadband Engine originally designed for video game platforms and working in conjunction with AMD processors.