The quest to build the world´s most potent supercomputer is like a never-ending Olympic event, with the pride of entire nations at stake. This summer, the U.S. will tighten its grip on the gold when engineers at the Department of Energy´s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory boost the speed of IBM´s reigning champion Blue Gene/L to an anticipated 270 teraflops-a floor-shaking 270 trillion calculations per second.