IBM, MIT, and others to use supercomputers to study coronavirus

The fight against the coronavirus has a new ally: supercomputers.

IBM, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the Department of Energy announced Sunday they are spearheading the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium, which aims to use supercomputers to study the coronavirus.  

Google, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft are also part of the consortium. 

Supercomputers owned by tech companies, the government, and research institutions are capable of running complex experiments much more quickly than a traditional computer, let alone a puny human brain. 

These things are physically huge, too: a supercomputer called Frontier, housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, is set to be the world's most powerful supercomputer when it's completed in 2021. It will weigh over 1 million pounds and is the size of two basketball courts.  Read more...