IBM’s new supercomputer will be used by the Naval Oceanograhpic Office Major Shared Resource Center (MSRC) to prevent disasters at sea.

The supercomputer, a Power 575 Hydro-Cluster, has a peak speed of 90 teraflops (90 trillion floating-point operations per second), making it one of the most powerful systems in the Department of Defense.

The NAVO MSRC is one of four Department of Defense High Performance Computing MSRCs established under the auspices of the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program.

“The Power 575 supercomputer is specifically designed for the type of computationally intensive work undertaken by NAVO,” said Dave Turek, vice president of deep computing for IBM. “This system will enhance DoD research efforts and significantly enhance the ability to perform detailed oceanographic modeling and weather forecasting that will help keep the naval fleet and commercial shippers out of harm’s way.”

The Power 575 Hydro-Cluster is powered by one of the world’s fastest microprocessors, POWER6, and is cooled by an innovative water system that makes it highly energy-efficient. The Power 575 is designed to help users tackle some of the world’s most challenging problems in fields such as energy, aerospace and weather modeling.