Named "bluefire," this supercomputer has a peak speed of more than 76 teraflops (76 trillion floating-point operations per second). Manufactured by IBM, it is known as a Power 575 Hydro-Cluster and is the first in a highly energy-efficient class of machines. Increasingly fast machines such as this one are vital to research into such areas as climate change and the formation of hurricanes and other severe storms. Scientists at NCAR and across the country will use the system to accelerate research into climate change and to improve weather forecasting models.
