Intel ASCI Red

ASCI Red (also known as ASCI Option Red or TFLOPS) was the first computer built under the Advanced Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI). ASCI Red was built by Intel and installed at Sandia in late 1996. The design was based on the Intel Paragon computer. The original goals to deliver a true teraflop machine by the end of 1996 that would be capable of running an ASCI application using all memory and nodes by September 1997 were met. It was used by the US government from the years of 1997 to 2005. It was the fastest machine on the planet until late 2000, and was used to maintain the US nuclear arsenal and simulate nuclear tests. It was the first ASCI machine that the Department of Energy acquired, and also the first supercomputer to score above one teraflops on the LINPACK benchmark, a test that measures a computers calculation speed. Later upgrades to ASCI Red allowed it to perform above two teraflops. This giant boost in computing speed gave researchers and the Department of Energy a five order of magnitude increase in computing speed over the fastest computers of the time.