Petaflopped

The most recent semi-arbitrary milestone in computing has been passed, with a military supercomputer smashing through the 1-petaflop barrier. It was originally feared that the computer may become self-aware, engage Skynet and declare a war of extermination on humanity, ultimately resulting in an Austrian governor in California. But fortunately it turns out the main processing load is carried by some 12000 modified IBM Cell chips, which is of course the main processor for Sony's Playstation 3, so at worst we can expect a nationwide shortage of Doritos, Mountain Dew and bong hits as the new computer gets to work.

Analysts are amazed at the new technology, which will somehow allow researchers to determine if aging nuclear weapons will spontaneously self-detonate (*crossing fingers!*). Even more amazing is that the military actually managed to plan and execute a project within budget, with no reliance on propaganda and relatively few casualties. However, in what some may perceive as a setback, the computer opened its first session by raising the national terror alert to "garden chartreuse" and advising a preemptive nuclear strike on Tehran.

A petaflop is one quadrillion processor-level calculations per second. This type of speed can be harnessed by scientists to unravel the great mysteries of our time, like very large primes research, advanced cryptography (which is closely related to very large primes research) and I guess maybe something about global warming, just as soon as SimEarth 2: Terraflopping Boogaloo is released. By comparison, if every atom in an average human body was turned into a calculator capable of 1 calculation per second, the result would be a supercomputer still 7 trillion times faster than the Los Alamos-based Roadrunner, so, obviously we still have a long way to go.