Supercomputer HLRB-II provides a computing power of 62 teraflops, in other words 62 trillion arithmetic operations per second. Taken as a whole, Research Centre Jülich boasts two of the 24 German supercomputers that feature amongst the fastest 500 computers in the world. JUBL (Jülich Blue Gene/L) has a computing power of around 46 teraflops, while JUMP (Jülich Multi Processor) boasts around 9 teraflops. They are available to around 200 research groups in Europe and perform simulations and compute models from all research areas: from materials science and particle physics to medicine and environmental research. The third Gauss-partner, HLRS, owns a Supercomputer with 12 Teraflops and holds 108th place in the world.

The contract for the computer due to arrive this autumn was signed by Achim Bachem, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Research Centre Jülich, and Martin Jetter, CEO of IBM Germany, last Monday in Jülich. With a computing power of over 220 teraflops (220 trillion arithmetic operations per second), the computer would sit in 2nd place in the current TOP500 list, just behind its similarly constructed brother in Livermore, USA. In Jülich in autumn, 65,000 processors will be in operation connected through an extremely efficient communication network of the latest generation. Blue Gene supercomputers stand out as a result of their compactness and energy efficiency. They use less than a tenth of the power required by similar computers. When IBM delivers the supercomputer, the Research Centre will become one of the first places worldwide to have a Blue Gene/P system.