Documentation for GF-11 Supercomputer
date: label: date made
content: 1985-1999
label: date made
content: 1984-1999
name: label: maker
content: IBM
notes: label: Description
content: In 1983, physicist Don Weingarten (born 1945) left the University of Indian to join the IBM Research Center in Yorktown, New York. There he and colleagues began work on a supercomputer designed to run algorithms he had established for solving problems in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). The GF11, a supercomputer designed to calculate at a rate of 11 gigaflops (11 billion floating point operations per second). By 1993, Weingarten and his colleagues were able to publish their first QCD calculations, which gave the mass of several known particles. Using his algorithms, he then sought to compute the mass of glueballs, shortlived particles thought to hold together quarks in protons and neutrons.
label: Description
content: Portions of the GF11 supercomputer in the Smithsonian collections have museum acquisition number 2000.0150. The materials in acquisition 2005.3061.01 include one CD of software, one small box of slides, and thirteen folders of documents and reprints.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Computers
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: IBM
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2005.3061.01
label: catalog number
content: 2005.3061.01
label: nonaccession number
content: 2005.3061
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Documentation, Supercomputer
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 11 in x 9 in x 4 in; 27.94 cm x 22.86 cm x 10.16 cm