Los Alamos: Roadrunner as important as first computer

In July, technicians will pack up the system on 21 tractor trailer trucks and move it to Los Alamos, where they'll reassemble it and test it all over again. It's slated to be up and running there by the end of the summer.

Researchers, however, didn't want to wait that long to start using Roadrunner.

Wallace said researchers were quick to move to Poughkeepsie to start using the high-speed machine to get a jump start on research projects.

He noted that one group of researchers is studying climate change and ocean circulation. Before researchers started using the new supercomputer, they were analyzing large blocks - 10 kilometers to 20 kilometers - at one time. Now, they can study much smaller chunks or area, and that is giving them very different results.

"What we've found already is that when we change the size of the blocks, we're seeing physical phenomena that we never were able to see when we had the coarser grid," said Wallace. "This will allow us to understand how energy transports in the ocean, which is perhaps the most important part of everyday weather."

He added that Roadrunner is also helping scientists figure out how to simulate human vision. Wallace said that he anticipates that the computer will help scientists create usable artificial vision technology within 10 years.

"One of the things that is really hard for us to understand is how the brain actually observes objects," explained Wallace. "Even very young people learn to differentiate an apple from an orange, but it's very difficult to teach a computer to do that. Is it the shape? The color? We can use this simulation to see how the brain converts all this information about the color, shape, the tone and into a decision of whether that's an orange or an apple."

Wallace said that kind of technology would aid people with sight impairments, as well as benefit robotics.

Once Roadrunner is set up in Los Alamos, scientists also will begin working on classified research projects, like tracking satellites orbiting in space and monitoring nuclear waste sites.