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At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, a supercomputer named "Sequoia" puts nearly every other computer on the planet to shame. With 1.6 million processor cores (16 per CPU) across 96 racks, Sequoia can perform 16 thousand trillion calculations per second, or 16.32 petaflops.

Who would need such horsepower? The IBM Blue Gene/Q-based system was built for the Department of Energy for simulations designed to extend the lifespan of nuclear weapons.