On This Day in Tech History

On June 29, 2000, IBM launched its fastest computer at that time, called the ASCI White. ASCI stands for Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative, and the ASCI White was specifically designed for the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. ASCI White was the world's first computer to break the teraflop barrier, meaning it could perform more than one trillion calculations per second. It had 8,192 IBM Power3 processors, 6 terabytes of memory, and a peak performance of 12.3 teraflops. The ASCI White was primarily used for simulating nuclear weapons testing, but it was also used for a wide range of scientific research in areas such as astrophysics, chemistry, and climate modeling.