In one corner, representing Sun Microsystems, is Ranger, which might become the fastest supercomputer ever to be built. Ranger will go online by the end of this year in the most appropriate state for superlatives, Texas.

In another corner sits IBM's famous Blue Gene, which currently has the title of Fastest Supercomputer in the World with a performance of some 360 teraflops.

At <A HREF="http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=53340">the International Supercomputing Conference</A> currently taking place in Dresden, Germany, Sun is offering glimpses of its Sun Constellation System, which it described as "one of the world's first open petascale computing environments."