A supercomputer constructed with components designed for the Sony PlayStation 3 has scaled a new computing peak. The IBM machine, code-named Roadrunner, has been showcased to run at ‘petaflop speeds’. The speed is equivalent of a whopping one thousand trillion calculations per second. The benchmark means that the computer is at least twice as nimble as the world’s current fastest machine, also by IBM.

The supercomputer is to be installed at a US government lab later this year for monitoring the country’s nuclear stockpile. It will also be employed for climate change, astronomy and genomics research. The vice president of next generation computing systems, IBM, Bijan Davari, told BBC News that the firm was getting closer to ‘simulating the real world’.

He added:

It would be of particular usage for calculating risk involved in financial market. The latency of the calculations is so tiny that for all practical purposes it is real time.

IBM’s Blue Gene/L is the current fastest supercomputer. It is at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and utilised in the US Department of Energy’s Stockpile Stewardship Programme that oversees their nuclear weapons.