Special Features:
IBM RETAILS THE GRID
IBM
introduced a new option for companies that want
supercomputing power, but
not the fixed costs and operational responsibility
of owning a supercomputer.
IBM customers now have the option to either buy
POWER or Intel processor-based
supercomputer grid cluster or access the power
on demand, paying for
processing power based on the required capacity and
duration of use.
IBM's new supercomputing e-Business on Demand service
will help customers
transform their businesses into organizations that more
closely resemble
the transparent, yet highly-responsive ecosystem of the
Internet. By
providing a virtualized resource that customers can draw as
needed,
supercomputing on demand promises to help turn fixed costs into
variable
costs, matching supercomputing power exactly to customer demand.
Certain segments, including petroleum, digital media and life sciences,
require the power of supercomputers, but only at certain times in their
product development cycles. Other times, the servers they own with
supercomputing capabilities sit idle, or at best under utilized. For
example
in Hollywood, studios need massive supercomputing power to render
animation
used in movies. Once the film is complete, the need goes away.
The new IBM
e-business on demand service is designed to provide customers
with the latest
technology to solve massive computational problems and they
pay only for the
computing power and capacity they need.
The first company to access
supercomputing power from IBM on demand is PGS
Data Processing, a division of
Petroleum Geo-Services, for an advanced seismic
imaging project in the deep
water Gulf of Mexico.
"Seismic imaging services employ the latest
numerically intensive
applications, but are also highly cost competitive. PGS
has been looking for
a more flexible business model which addresses peak
computing requirements,
assures rapid response to our customers, but minimizes
long term, incremental
cost commitments to PGS," said Chris Usher, president
of Global Data
Processing.
John Gillooly, vice president of Western
Hemisphere Data Processing at PGS
added, "By working with IBM, we can now
scale real-time to handle requests for
urgent deep water imaging solutions.
This new on-demand supercomputing ideally
suits our business requirements, and
may also stimulate time-to-market for
emerging technologies that require short
periods of intensive computing."
"Customers in some sectors want
access to large scale computing power in short
bursts," said David Turek, vice
president, Linux Clusters and Grid at IBM.
"This supercomputing offering will
change how business is done. The ability
to buy computing power on-demand
allows customers to save on server
maintenance, management, and to scale their
infrastructure rapidly, in
response to business demands."
IBM will
create large POWER and Intel processor based supercomputer grids to
support
these new e-Business on demand product offerings for customers. The
initial
IBM supercomputing hosting facility that will be based in
Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
with other national and international facilities to follow
which will all be
linked together.
To supply the processing power for supercomputing on
demand, IBM will build a
grid of Intel and POWER processors. The grid will be
made of a hundreds of
IBM eServer p655 systems, a powerful UNIX server that
can pack as many as
128 POWER4 processors in a single frame, and a massive
Linux cluster with IBM
eServer x335 and x345 systems, rack-mounted servers
with Intel Xeon
processors.
About IBM
IBM is the world's
largest information technology company, with 80 years of
leadership in helping
businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across
IBM and key Business
Partners, IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions
and technologies that
enable customers, large and small, to take full
advantage of the new era of
e-business.
http://www.ibm.com
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