An IBM supercomputer designed for simulating nuclear explosions has turned out to be 23 percent faster than anticipated when the project began.

The $110 million machine, called ASCI White, was assembled at IBM's test facility in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and is being reassembled at its final home, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, Calif. The machine takes up two basketball courts worth of floor space, weighs 106 tons, and has 8,192 CPUs. It was clocked at 12.3 trillion calculations per second, nearly a quarter faster than the 10 "teraflop" figure specified in the contract, IBM said. The results are more than academic. The massive machine is a scaled- up version of an upcoming RS/6000 SP IBM server code-named "Nighthawk 2," due to debut in July. The Nighthawk 2 will be the first commercially released computer to use IBM's new Power3-III processor. As previously reported, ASCI White is one of a series of supercomputers commissioned by the Department of Energy to test nuclear weapons without explosions. The program, the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI), aims to fund computer makers to create supercomputers out of large numbers of comparatively ordinary parts. DOE cut costs for ASCI White by leasing it from IBM for two years instead of purchasing it outright, LLNL officials said earlier. High-performance technical computing is a tough market to crack, with extremely high demands for performance and expertise.