NY Times, Sept 8, 1995. Intel Wins Contract to Develop World's Fastest Supercomputer By Lawrence M. Fisher San Francisco, Sept. 7 -- The Intel Corporation said today that it had won a a contract from the Department of Energy to develop what it called the world's fastest supercomputer. The machine, to be built at an estimated cost of $45 million, would use 9,000 of Intel's forthcoming P6 microprocessors linked in a configuration known as massively parallel. In recent years, massively parallel computers using thousands of relatively inexpensive off-the-shelf chips have stolen the performance lead from traditional supercomputers like those made famous by Cray Research Inc., which use far fewer, but far more powerful processors. Intel said its new supercomputer would be the first to achieve the goal of calculating more than a trillion floating-point operations a second, known as a teraflop. The machine, to be kept at Sandia National Laboratories In Albuquerque, N.M., would be used by Department of Energy scientists to study a variety of complex problems, foremost among them nuclear weapons safety. "President Clinton is committed to ending underground nuclear testing," Victor Reis, Assistant Secretary for Energy Programs, said in a statement. "Computer simulation will be a principal means for insuring the safety, reliability and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. We are embarking on a 10-year program to advance the state of high performance computing to meet national security objectives," he said. ... ------