IBM Corp. has built a supercomputer the size of a television based on microchip technology to be used in gaming consoles due out next year.

A prototype of IBM’s future Blue Gene/L supercomputer, it can perform two trillion calculations per second.

IBM vice president of technology and strategy Irving Wladawsky-Berger said that the supercomputer used 1,000 microprocessors based on PowerPC microchip technology, which will be the foundation of the next generation of gaming consoles from Nintendo Co. and Sony Corp.

He said the chips were less expensive and consumed less power than traditional microprocessors, making it possible to pack the same amount of computing power into a smaller space.