Scientists working to tackle our energy challenges at the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, just got a powerful new weapon. While there’s no cape, the Olympus supercomputer does sport some superhero-like powers. It can’t fly, but it could perhaps help scientists figure out how with its ability to process computations as fast as 20,000 personal computers combined.

The supercomputer’s enormous disk bandwith – 80 gigabytes per second – allows it to read and write information to a disk 800 times faster than a personal computer, and it can hold 38.7 terabytes of memory. If you’re like us and were a little fuzzy on the prefix “tera,” it means 10 to the 12th power. So 38.7 terabytes is almost 39 trillion bytes. You get the picture; this is a very powerful computer combining with some very bright minds. Keep reading →