As of November 2006, the
supercomputer by the name of
MareNostrum can be considered the greatest
supercomputer all of
Europe (5th greatest in the world). With a
Linux based
operating system, the supercomputer takes up 120 square meters weighing in at 40,000 kilograms (approximately 44 tons). Consisting of 2560 JS21 blade computing nodes each made up of 2 dual-core
IBM 64-bit PowerPC 970 processors going at 2.3
gigahertz with 10240
computer processing units altogether.
The greatest rival to the MareNostrum supercomputer is the Blue Gene/L, which is considered the most powerful supercomputer in the world. Second in the list of great supercomputers is the BGW located in the Thomas J Watson Research Center in New York.
After being constructed in Madrid, the system was then placed in Barcelona at the Technical University of Catalonia. The system has since been used in research for the human genome project, forecasting of weather, protein research and designing new drugs. The overall goal of this supercomputer, like others, is to increase human knowledge in all of these areas. Scientific questions that have baffled scientists for centuries can now be easily organized and studied in a computer environment, increasing the chances of discovering new technologies and answers to these scientific questions. The betterment of all of mankind can easily be seen as the goal of the MareNostrum supercomputer.
The term Mare Nostrum comes from the Latin term meaning "Our Sea", as used by the Romans when referring to the Mediterranean Sea.
See also: Mare Nostrum
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MareNostrum
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/linux/power/marenostrum/