IBM will build the world’s most powerful supercomputer at a US government laboratory.

The new machine will be able to achieve “petaflop speeds,” said IBM. One petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

From the BBC article:
“The new computer is a “hybrid” design, using both conventional supercomputer processors and the new “cell” chip designed for Sony’s PlayStation 3. Running at peak speed, it will be able to crunch through 1.6 thousand trillion calculations per second.”

Currently, BlueGene/L is the most powerful computer in the world (see pic below):

(Photograph BBC site)

The computer will contain 16,000 standard processors working alongside 16,000 “cell” processors, designed for the PlayStation 3 (PS3).

Wow! I thing this machine will run IBM AIX (or may be Linux) but I am not sure.