The calculations will be performed at both Oak Ridge and Argonne, which house two of the world's top ten fastest computers.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Thom Mason said the battery project was the result of two visits to Oak Ridge in 2009 by IBM's vice president of research. "From those discussions, it became apparent that our partnership had many of the unique capabilities needed to tackle a scientific problem as important and challenging as increasing by more than a factor of 10 the energy stored in batteries for transportation."

"Argonne is committed to developing lithium air technologies", stated Argonne Director Eric Isaacs. "The obstacles to Li-air batteries becoming a viable technology are formidable, but the modelling and simulation capabilities of DOE's supercomputers will help us accelerate the innovations required in materials science, chemistry and engineering."