AEROSPACE

While the new supercomputers are not expected to be in operation before the end of the decade they are being viewed as crucial investments for progress in science, advanced technologies and national security, The New York Times reported Friday. Once the exclusive territory of nuclear weapons designers and code breakers, ultrafast computers are increasingly being used in everyday product design. Procter & Gamble used a supercomputer to study the airflow over its Pringles potato chips to help stop them from fluttering off the company’s assembly lines. Today, driven by advances in parallel computing — with software making it possible to lash together arrays of tens or even hundreds of thousands of processor chips — the speed of future supercomputers is limited only by cost, adequate electricity and the ability to cool the systems, which now sprawl over thousands of square feet. China has 19 supercomputers ranked among the 500 fastest machines, it's becoming an issue of national pride. At the moment, the world's fastest computer is at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory -- it has reached more than 136 trillion operations a second. However, on the horizon is the petaflop that can perform 1 quadrillion mathematical operations a second, or eight times the speed of today's fastest computer. Japanese and U.S. experts estimate a petaflop will cost nearly $1 billion for each machine.