IBM and Cray have beaten out Sun Microsystems to win sizable U.S. government contracts to design a new-generation supercomputer.On Tuesday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded the two companies four-year contracts to design a supercomputer that is 100 times more powerful than today’s most powerful systems, yet is simpler to program, administer and use. Cray’s contract is valued at US$250 million, and IBM’s is worth $244 million.Each company is expected to have a prototype supercomputer ready by 2010. The contracts were awarded as part of DARPA’s High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) program, which is targeted at the national security community, science and industrial sectors.Launched in 2002, the program’s goal is to develop a system capable of performing calculations at the rate of two to four petaflops per second. A petaflop is one quadrillion (one thousand trillion) calculations per second. “Flop” stands for floating-point operations. The fastest supercomputer in operation today, an IBM BlueGene system, operates at 360 teraflops, or 360 trillion calculations per second.Sun Microsystems, which had been funded in earlier rounds of the contract, lost out on the latest round.However, the company still plans to integrate the technology it had been developing into its product lines, a Sun spokeswoman said.Besides developing prototypes of the supercomputers, IBM and Cray are also tasked with building programming tools that speed the time it takes to write applications tenfold compared with what was possible when the HPCS program began.DARPA says the ultimate goal of the project is to create a new generation of economically viable, high-productivity computing systems that can be sold to national security and high-end industrial users. Federal agencies likely to use the supercomputers will include the National Security Agency, the Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Agency. By Robert Mullins, IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau) Related Links: U.S. Supercomputer Gets Performance Boost IBM to Build New DOE Supercomputer IBM Tops Supercomputer List, Opteron Gains Ground IBM Translation Software to Be Tested by U.S. Military in IraqCheck out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content feature Red Hat embraces hybrid cloud for internal IT The maker of OpenShift has leveraged its own open container offering to migrate business-critical apps to AWS as part of a strategy to move beyond facilitating hybrid cloud for others and capitalize on the model for itself. By Paula Rooney May 29, 2023 5 mins CIO 100 Technology Industry Hybrid Cloud feature 10 most popular IT certifications for 2023 Certifications are a great way to show employers you have the right IT skills and specializations for the job. These 10 certs are the ones IT pros are most likely to pursue, according to data from Dice. By Sarah K. White May 26, 2023 8 mins Certifications Careers interview Stepping up to the challenge of a global conglomerate CIO role Dr. Amrut Urkude became CIO of Reliance Polyester after his company was acquired by Reliance Industries. He discusses challenges IT leaders face while transitioning from a small company to a large multinational enterprise, and how to overcome them. By Yashvendra Singh May 26, 2023 7 mins Digital Transformation Careers brandpost With the new financial year looming, now is a good time to review your Microsoft 365 licenses By Veronica Lew May 25, 2023 5 mins Lenovo Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe