Monthly Archives: September 2007

Blue Gene/L

It doesn’t look like it, but this is the most powerful computer in the world.

Blue Gene/L

IBM’s Blue Gene/L operates at an enormous 280 teraFLOPS. This means that it can carry out 280,000,000,000,000 floating point operations per second (calculations of the form ax=b); making it more than 100,000 times more powerful than the most powerful modern home computers. You can find more pictures of Blue Gene/L at the IBM website.

The UK’s most powerful computer is the Atomic Weapons Establishment‘s LARCH supercomputer which clocks in at 32 teraFLOPS; unfortunately most of the details of what it actually does with all that computing power are classified.

Kameraflage

If you point an infrared remote control at a cameraphone or digital camera whilst one of the buttons is held down you’ll notice an odd effect: your eyes will see nothing different but the camera will pick up a purplely glow:

Remote control

This is because the CCD (the “eye”) that the camera uses is sensitive to infrared light; whereas the human eye is not. The camera sees a type of light that your eye cannot.

Kameraflage is a special ink that only reflects infrared light. This enables designers to create clothes, posters etc. that show one thing to the naked eye and something completely different to digital cameras.

Kameraflage