Boost for UK's Superfast Computer

by Jonathan Fildes BBC News, 2 Apr 2006 Britain's most powerful super computer has received a boost from the government. When it is built in 2007, the high spec number cruncher will be faster than any in Europe. The High-End Computing Terascale Resource, or Hector as it is known, will be owned by the Research Councils of the UK. It will be used by scientists to simulate everything from climate change to atomic structures. The new supercomputer could run at speeds of up to 100 teraflops and will be able to carry out up to 100 trillion calculations every second, 100,000 times faster than an ordinary computer. However, it is unlikely to ever be pushed to its limits, achievable only for short bursts of time that are too small for scientists to run their programs properly. Read more