(RTTNews) -  International Business Machines Corp. (IBM: News ) and Brown University, Friday announced the opening of their shared investment project, a multimillion-dollar supercomputer, at Brown's Center for computation and visualization. IBM said that the supercomputer is the most powerful computational system in Rhode Island and will be used by researchers statewide to tackle challenges affecting Ocean State residents in climate change, education, energy and health.

The new supercomputer, which can perform more than 14 trillion calculations per second, operates at a peak performance speed of more than 14 teraflops, widely considered to meet supercomputer standards.

It is equipped with a total of 1,440 microprocessors and is based on three IBM iDataPlex systems, an IBM Cluster 1350 and multiple IBM storage systems running General Parallel File System, supported by IBM Global Services.

The computer, which is six times more energy efficient than what is available at Brown, has 390 terabytes of storage capacity and 4.5 terabytes of memory. Researchers can now compute a problem that is 20 times larger as the supercomputer allows parallel programs to be run that are much faster than what had been available.

Combined with the supercomputer, Brown increased its backbone network to 10 gigabits from one gigabit in order to facilitate greater bandwidth for faster data movement.
IBM and Brown will work with government, universities, hospitals, nonprofit organizations, businesses and other entities in Rhode Island on using the supercomputer. Further, they will host a series of symposia involving world-class scientific experts to discuss how the supercomputer can be used to tackle pressing societal problems.

IBM collaborated with researchers at the University of Rhode Island and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, who will be among its first users, to make sure the system will meet researchers' requirements. The supercomputer is expected to be available to other universities in Rhode Island as well as to hospitals and nonprofit organizations throughout the state by next year.

According to IBM the increased computing horsepower can be utilized in some wide research areas including advances in genomics that could lead to drugs for treating specific diseases such as cancer, investigation of the mechanics of human and animal movement, exploration of the web of animal life and ocean ecosystems and studies of the terrain of planetary bodies, such as Mars.

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