Colsa to build 'Mach 5,' fast supercomputer

Huntsville-based Colsa Corp. announced the purchase of over a thousand of Apple computer's G5 servers to build "Mach 5," a computer that the company says could become one of the world's fastest.

"We expect Mach 5 to rank as one of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet," said Dr. Anthony DiRienzo, executive vice president at Colsa.

The supercomputer will consist of 1,566 Xserve servers, running on 64-bit G5 dual processors, Apple's fastest computer processor on the market.

According to DiRienzo, Mach 5, which is the supercomputer's name, is expected to deliver a performance of more than 25 teraflops per second (25 trillion calculations per second), making it the second-fastest computer in the world, at a cost of $5.8 million.

In contrast, the world's current fastest supercomputer, Japan's Earth Simulator, runs 40 trillion calculations per second at a cost of $350 million, according to TOP500 (www.top500.org), an industry Web site.

Colsa is building Mach 5 for the Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center, a division of the United States Army's Research and Development Command located at Redstone Arsenal. The supercomputer is expected to be in use by the Army this fall.

The new system is expected to be delivered to COLSA's Hypersonic Missile Technology facility at its Research and Operations Center in Huntsville this month. The Army plans to use Mach 5 to model the complex aero-thermodynamics of hypersonic flight, including applications related to missile interceptors and scramjet engine performance.

Colsa Corp. is a locally based engineering services firm. The company was founded in 1980 by Francisco and Carmen Collazo. The company's business is centered around the Army and missile defense programs. The company has about 800 employees and has an annual revenue of $112 million.