By Steve Fisher, Editor -- Today IBM and Germany's Juelich Research Center announced that IBM has been awarded a contract worth over $10 Million dollars to build Germany's largest supercomputer. The system, based on 37 IBM eServer p690s systems, will be installed at the Juelich center’s Central Institute for Applied Mathematics (ZAM). The new supercomputer will be based on IBM POWER4 microprocessor technology and will reportedly reach a peak performance of 5.8 TFLOPS (easily placing it among the world’s fastest supercomputers) and will become a part of the national German Grid connecting supercomputers such as the IBM system at the Max Plank Institute. The new system will reportedly deliver the lab’s scientists over 13 times the computing performance currently available to the Research Center Juelich and the John von Neumann-Institute for Computing (NIC), a national supercomputer center. The new system is slated for installation in the summer of 2003 in a new building currently under construction. "As the most powerful supercomputer in Germany, the POWER4 based system will significantly enhance and accelerate research projects," said Ulla Thiel, director of high performance computing, IBM Europe. "With the increased performance, powerful new research applications will also be enabled, allowing scientists to expand and explore in entirely new dimensions." The primary uses of the new supercomputer will be performing the complex calculations involved in the center’s work in physics, chemistry and the life sciences. One particular area of interest at Juelich is solid-state physics which includes the analysis of nanoscale magnets and other structures at the atomic and molecular levels. ZAM and the IBM Germany Development Laboratory Boeblingen are teaming up to investigate the potential for optimizing the new IBM system for use with UNICORE grid technology. This grid technology already links the national supercomputer centers in Germany. Plans for the creation of Europe-wide connections are already under way and will include Juelich’s new supercomputer. "Grid computing has enormous potential in Germany in particular, given the non-centralized nature of the country's infrastructure," said Ulla Thiel, director of high performance computing, IBM Europe. "IBM's leadership and capabilities in Grid Computing made the IBM eServer supercomputer a great solution for the needs of Germany's science and research community."