Re:What's new? 

Well... Earth Simulator was bigger and faster... as was big mac. Every advance 
in computer design and fabrication has been about "bigger and faster." It may 
sound trivial to you, but that is because you got no idea about what is involved 
about making things "bigger and faster."

What is significant about blue gene is that is some sort of compromise between 
off the shelf parts (PPC based Processing elements vs. the Earth Simulator SX 
based custom vector PEs), and efficient interconnection (plain crappy cluster 
like the Big mac with a better interconnect at multiple layers starting with 
dual cores per die).

In the end it all leads to the same goal: tackling bigger problems faster. So it 
may sound trivial but there is a lot of research going into this baby.
