IBM leaves U of I supercomputer project

CHAMPAIGN — IBM Corp. is leaving a project at the University of Illinois to build the world's fastest supercomputer.

The university's National Center for Supercomputing Applications and IBM said in a brief statement Monday that IBM terminated its contract. IBM said the computer had grown more expensive and technically demanding than anticipated.

The NCSA said it still plans to pursue a petascale computer in what it called "timely manner" and is working with the National Science Foundation. Petascale refers to the speed of the computer and means it could perform a thousand trillion mathematical operations a second.

IBM was chosen in 2007 to build Blue Waters. The computer was initially due to go online this year.