The largest supercomputer in the world, called Roadrunner, has begun to work and began with a terribly simple little puzzles ─ modeling of the universe. The model, which deals with Roadrunner, is among the largest attempts to model the distribution of matter in the universe, scientists tend to consider the concentration of the substance on the scale of galaxies beyond the amount that can be detected through regular surveys of the sky.

Salman Habib, member of the Los Alamos Laboratory, argues that the understanding of dark energy is the number one issue in the explanation of the universe. "As the Universe expands, and at the same time is accelerating, then either there is a huge gap in our understanding of physics, or a strange new form of matter that dominates the universe ─ 'dark energy' which is about 70 percent of the universe", ─ said Habib . ─ "Furthermore, in a universe of unknown 'dark matter' five times more than ordinary matter, and we know it from many different observations, the most impressive we've seen how it bends light, the photographs from the space telescope Hubble, but its origin also unclear.

Despite the fact that it inspects only a small part of the "accessible" of the universe, a model of the universe created by Habib and named "Roadrunner Universe", requires the super computer, because, like the universe, this model is extremely high. The basic unit of the model are the "particles" with a mass of about one billion suns (assuming that the mass of each galaxy about a trillion suns), and it includes more than 64 billion of these particles.

Model Roadrunner Universe is based on an algorithm with a hierarchical grid of particles that most closely matches the physical aspects of modeling hybrid architecture Roadrunner. Habib and his team write a brand new computer code for use in a hybrid architecture of Roadrunner, and full use of computational accelerators PowerXCell 8i. They also created special software for analysis and visualization of collateral huge databases for modeling.

Among other tasks to be performed by supercomputer Roadrunner, is the creation of "family tree" of HIV, as well as modeling of behavior of nanotubes for long periods of time.