IBM has announced that the 10-petaflop IBM Blue Gene/Q supercomputer, named "Mira", will be operational in 2012 and made available to scientists from industry, academia and government research facilities around the world. The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory will use IBM's next-generation Blue Gene supercomputer to enable significant advances in areas such as designing ultra-efficient electric car batteries, understanding global climate change and exploring the evolution of our universe.

"Computation and supercomputing are critical to solving some of our greatest scientific challenges, like advancing clean energy and understanding the Earth's climate", said Rick Stevens, associate laboratory director for computing, environment and life sciences at Argonne National Laboratory. "Argonne's new IBM supercomputer will help address the critical demand for complex modeling and simulation capabilities, which are essential to improving our economic prosperity and global competitiveness".