IBM Offers High Performance Computing Outside the Lab

Market Wire, May, 2008

Driven by growing commercial need in areas such as financial services, digital media creation and medical imaging, IBM (NYSE: IBM) today expanded its High Performance Computing (HPC) capabilities for businesses with the introduction of the IBM® BladeCenter® QS22 -- a new, economical supercomputing technology inspired by advanced scientific research facilities.

The heart of the QS22 is a new processor compliant with the Cell Broadband Engine(TM) (Cell/B.E.) Architecture, originally developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba to provide the computing power for cutting-edge gaming applications. And for the most challenging arithmetic operations, this new processor, the IBM PowerXCell(TM) 8i, offers five-times the speed of the original Cell/B.E. processor.

Coupled with additions like 16-times more memory (up to 32GB) than its predecessors, the QS22 can handle workloads that previously required dozens of servers. As an example, for a physician, that could mean finding and diagnosing a tumor in seconds instead of hours.

IBM has built a strong ecosystem around the new QS22 to address critical real-time analytic and imaging projects, with over 20 IBM business partners to enable key solutions for the Cell/B.E. technology and 35 universities to provide in-depth curriculum and resources. In total, these investments create an environment where HPC innovations can easily be introduced into the market, and a wider spectrum of businesses can take advantage of its unique capabilities and potential. Already, more than 50 customers worldwide are moving significant workloads to the QS22. For example:

--  Threshold Animation Studios, with the help of IBM, plans on changing
    the way animated movies and visual effects are made... forever. Today,
    creating visual effects and animation is a long and labor-intensive process
    where key creative decisions are often being made without a complete
    visualization of the final result. This in turn leads to multiple versions
    of a shot until a suitable result is achieved. Using the QS22 technology,
    Threshold's goal is to create a real-time visualization system that will
    show producers and directors a close approximation of the final product at
    nearly any stage of the production -- enabling efficiencies in the
    production pipeline that were once thought impossible.

--  Platform Computing's 'Symphony' offers a reliable and scalable HPC
    infrastructure for performing lightning-fast, pre- and post-trade
    analytics. Coupled with the new QS22, traders can run portfolio simulations
    much faster -- reducing time-to-results by up to 80 percent. In addition,
    this tightly integrated solution facilitates rapid and easy deployment of
    sophisticated analytical applications to mission-critical trading
    environments.

--  The ultra-high-speed communications capabilities of the new QS22 means
    Simudyne can create and run vastly improved visual, immersive, real-time
    simulations. These simulations offer significant potential benefits to
    companies in petroleum exploration and many other industries. Simudyne's
    simulation platform is specifically designed to assist in hydrocarbon
    exploration by growing algorithms that help speed up seismic surveys,
    optimize complex logistics networks and create software that improves
    according to the same principles that drive adaptation in natural systems.
    

The New Enterprise Data Center

According to technology analyst firm Gartner, more than 70 percent of Global 1000 companies will need to dramatically change their data centers in the next five years -- as they are running out of power and space, while managing skyrocketing energy and cooling costs. In response, IBM is helping clients develop a new enterprise data center, which offers dramatic improvements in IT efficiency and provides for rapid deployment of new IT services to support future business growth. IBM is helping clients move to new enterprise data centers by focusing on best practice around virtualization, highly efficient IT, service management and cloud computing.

The QS22 was designed from the ground-up as a key element of this new enterprise data center initiative. For development, the QS22 boasts an open environment, utilizing the flexibility of Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the primary operating system and the open development environment of Eclipse. For energy efficiency, it increases the performance-per-watt and better manages power draw from the overall server chassis from previous generations, thanks to some key built-in features:

--  The IBM Power Configurator helps systems managers understand the
    overall power requirements for operation.
--  The IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager helps monitor, control
    and virtualize the system's power.
--  The IBM Rear Door Heat eXchanger reduces data center hot spots.
--  The IBM Data Center Energy Efficiency services optimize and future-
    proof a data center for maximum performance.
    

In addition, IBM has made available thousands of pages of technical documentation on the Cell/B.E. Architecture to the public, including a free, full-system simulator. IBM has released an upgrade to its Software Development Kit (SDK) for Multicore Acceleration v3, providing enhancements and templates to enable clients to utilize the new features of QS22.