The project that led to the development of the Blue Gene/L supercomputer was designed to explore the use of computation to advance our understanding of important biological processes, such as protein folding. By 2007, the project produced an entire line of Blue Gene supercomputers that had a profound impact on a wide range of industries.
“Blue Gene’s massive computing power will initially be used to model the folding of human proteins, making this fundamental study of biology the company’s first computing ‘grand challenge’ since the Deep Blue experiment. Learning more about how proteins fold is expected to give medical researchers better understanding of diseases, as well as potential cures.”
“IBM Announces $100 Million Research Initiative to build World's Fastest Supercomputer,”1999
“This is exactly what IBM Research does best—continuously placing big, aggressive bets on technologies that change the future of computing. In many ways, Deep Blue got a better job today—if this computer unlocks the mystery of how proteins fold, it will be an important milestone in the future of medicine and healthcare.”
“IBM Announces $100 Million Research Initiative to build World's Fastest Supercomputer,” IBM press release1999
“Blue Gene is truly a breakthrough accomplishment; it represents innovation in the true sense of the word by establishing a new model by which supercomputing power can be applied to a wider array of difficult problems. We are well on the way to delivering petascale computing, accelerating scientific discovery, and tackling complex business problems.”
IBM Journal of R&D, Vol 49, No 2/32005
“We’re sitting in my office, five minutes into the first conversation, and we knew only two things: that it would reach petaflop-scale processing speeds and that it would model the folding of a protein. ‘So we’re going to name it ‘Blue Gene,’ right?’ The … scientists, everyone told us, ‘No, you can’t!’ We were adamant: ‘It will be Blue Gene.’ Thankfully, Paul Horn and Lou Gerstner agreed, and the rest is history.”
In addition to offering high performance, Blue Gene supercomputers have repeatedly been cited as being among the most energy efficient in the world. Energy efficiency—including performance per watt for the most computationally demanding workloads—is a core design principle in developing IBM systems.
“The big computing power at low electricity rates allows us to boost the performance of very complex and computationally intensive algorithms.”
“IBM Triples Performance of World's Fastest, Most Energy-Efficient Supercomputer,” IBM press release2007
“Blue Gene/P is the fastest and most energy-efficient supercomputer on the planet.”
“Server Snapshots: IBM Blue Gene/P,” ServerWatch2007
“Today, the Blue Gene/P supercomputer is at least seven times more energy efficient than any other supercomputer. The influence of the Blue Gene supercomputer's energy-efficient design and computing model—once considered exotic—can be seen everywhere in the industry where people have attempted to lower energy use and get performance without traditional reliance on chip frequency.”
“Raising (and Lowering) the Bar for High Performance Computing,” ServerWatch2007