IBM Announces $100 Million Research Initiative to build World s Fastest Supercomputer Blue Gene to Tackle Protein Folding Grand Challenge YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, NY, December 6, 1999 -- IBM today announced a new $100 million exploratory research initiative to build a supercomputer 500 times more powerful than the world's fastest computers today. The new computer -- nicknamed Blue Gene by IBM researchers -- will be capable of more than one quadrillion operations per second (one petaflop). This level of performance will make Blue Gene 1,000 times more powerful than the Deep Blue machine that beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, and about 2 million times more powerful than today s top desktop PCs.
{"Image DocumentName": "IBM Announces  100 Million Research Initiative to build World s Fastest Supercomputer Blue Gene to Tackle Protein Folding Grand Challenge YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, NY, December 6, IBM today announced a new  100 million exploratory research initiative to build a supercomputer 500 times more powerful than the world\u2019s fastest computers today. The new computer -- nicknamed Blue Gene by IBM researchers -- will be capable of more than one quadrillion operations per second (one petaflop). This level of performance will make Blue Gene 1,000 times more powerful than the Deep Blue machine that beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, and about 2 million times more powerful than today s top desktop PCs.", "Image ImageDescription": "Blue Gene s massive computing power will initially be used to model the folding of human proteins, making this fundamental study of biology the company s first computing grand challenge since the Deep Blue experiment. Learning more about how proteins fold is expected to give medical researchers better understanding of diseases, as well as potential cures. This is exactly what IBM Research does best -- continuously placing big, aggressive bets on technologies that change the future of computing, said Dr. Paul M. Horn, senior vice president of IBM Research. In many ways, Deep Blue got a better job today -- if this computer unlocks the mystery of how proteins fold, it will be an important milestone in the future of medicine and healthcare.", "Image XResolution": "37", "Image YResolution": "37", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Centimeter", "Image Software": "SlidePlayer", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered"}