Protein structure prediction
In theory, it is possible to predict a protein fold ab initio,
that is from first principles. However, the task is beyond
the capabilities of current supercomputers. Recently IBM
announced plans to develop a new pentaflop
supercomputer (1015 floating point operations per second)
called “Blue Gene” that will be designed specifically with
the task of ab initio protein fold prediction in mind. It
should be just powerful enough for the task if no
unexpected complications arise.