The first of <A HREF="http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Infrastructure/IBM-Ships-First-WaterCooled-Supercomputer/?kc=EWKNLEDP051208D">a new generation of IBM supercomputers that use water for cooling</A> is on its way to Colorado for use within the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

The supercomputer--Bluefire--will replace three older systems at the NCAR's facility in Boulder in August when the machine goes online for the first time. At its peak, bluefire will offer 76 teraflops (or 76 trillion calculations per second) of performance, outpacing the three older systems, which offered a combined performance of 20 teraflops.

What makes the bluefire system important is that it's the first time IBM is using its new Power 575 Hydro-Cluster system within a supercomputer installation. The company announced the Power 575 in April as a new way to tackle the power and cooling issues within the field of high-performance computing (HPC).