INEEL to get SUN computer system that could link workers, stay secure – one of the 150 fastest supercomputers in the world

A new supercomputer could join workers at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory with colleagues in France, Chile and across the United States while keeping sensitive information secure.

The system could reach speeds of up to 1,500 gigaflops, making it one of the 150 fastest supercomputers in the world, officials said. It was designed by Sun Microsystems and the technology experts at the laboratory.

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"It will allow us to do calculations we would not be able to do otherwise," said Paul Kearns, the laboratory’s director for science.

Calculations and models that formerly took researchers a year will only take days to complete using the new system, officials said. Researchers will use the supercomputer to design the next generation of nuclear power plants, research the cause of mad cow disease and develop microbes that can eat heavy metals to use cleaning up contaminated sites.

Eric Greenwade, the laboratory’s chief information systems designer, said the faster speed does not necessarily mean that there will be any down time for the system.

"The reality is, when you increase the resources for a researcher, they increase their problems and the size of their models," Greenwade said.

Those outside the laboratory must be approved by the U.S. Department of Energy to use the system. The computer can isolate information, essentially giving each user its own part of the system to control, Greenwade said.

Sun Microsystems is leasing the system — made up of 230 servers wired together — to the laboratory for three years, at a cost of $1.97 million. The system is expected to be running by the end of September.

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