Special Features:
IBM ANNOUNCES SLEW OF GRID PROJECTS, INCLUDING EPA
IBM announced major new Grid computing projects, including the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has completed a pilot using Grid
computing, Linux and IBM supercomputers, to help the EPA and state agencies
perform improved air quality modeling and better predict the environmental
risks of exposure to air pollution.
The IBM project at the EPA included the Grid Toolbox, a collection of open
standards-based Grid software from IBM, Red Hat Linux Enterprise 2.1, IBM
eServer pSeries supercomputers and Avaki Enterprise Information Integration
(EII) software. The EPA will use the system to provide pay-as-you-go computing
services to its partners, including state agencies, which otherwise would not
have access to such advanced computing resources. The agency is currently
evaluating plans for expanding the project to a production environment.
"This advanced, open-standards-based system from IBM provides the agency with
added speed and increased efficiency focused on improving the nation's health
by partnering with the states in their implementation of new clean air
standards," said Paul Gilman, assistant administrator for the agency's
research and development component. Gilman added that the EPA anticipates a
positive impact on human health protection, ecosystem assessment, pollution
prevention, computational toxicology, genomics, systems biology and many
other areas critical to the protection of human health and the environment.
New Applications Ready For Grid
IBM also announced that it has completed work with 10 leading software
companies to ready their applications for Grid computing. The companies are
Ascential, Cadence, Chordiant, GGY, Exa, Insbridge, LSTC, Searchspace,
Peregrine and Turboworx. With this announcement, a total of 17 application
software companies have completed work with IBM this year to tune their
applications for Grid computing.
"The range of new Grid computing projects announced today, in government,
telecommunications, manufacturing, petroleum and digital entertainment, make
it clear that Grid computing is a force in the commercial enterprise," said
Ken King, vice president of Grid computing at IBM. "The addition of 10 new
application software providers to the roster of companies that have worked
with IBM to prepare their products for Grid further supports our view of its
momentum."
Finally, IBM announced new commercial Grid computing references throughout
Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. Projects include:
- Siemens Mobile (Europe) -- A world leader in the production of mobile
communications devices, Siemens mobile turned to Grid computing technology
from IBM and Grid middleware company Platform Computing to speed the
development and improve the quality and reliability of mobile communications
software. With Grid, Siemens mobile can better adapt to future software
development requirements and designate workloads to underutilized servers. The
Grid at Siemens mobile includes IBM eServer xSeries servers running Novell's
SUSE Linux.
- NS Solutions, IT subsidiary of Nippon Steel Corp, (Asia-Pacific) -- The
first instance of Grid technology being applied to production in iron mills,
NS Solutions is testing the use of Grid computing to improve production
planning systems of Nippon Steel. NS Solutions expects the use of Grid
technology will allow it to perform calculations in near real time, based on
customer specifications and delivery deadlines, thereby increasing its yield
of iron slabs, a key component of its manufacturing process. In tests, NS
Solutions connected multiple servers running Red Hat Linux and the Globus
Toolkit. In addition, plans call for the system to be linked with a group of
servers located in NS Solutions's Systems Research and Development Center in
Yokohama City.
- NTT Communications Corp (Asia-Pacific) -- Japan's largest
telecommunications company is testing Grid and Autonomic computing
technologies at OCN, NTT Com's Internet connectivity service. Offering a wide
range of Internet services with various networking technologies, including
optical fiber and ADSL, OCN is the largest such service in Japan, with more
than four million subscribers. Working with the IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory,
NTT Com's goal is to use these technologies to improve the service quality of
OCN.
- Sinopec (Asia-Pacific) -- China's largest producer and marketer of oil
products and a leading supplier of petrochemical products, Sinopec asked IBM
to create a Grid infrastructure to improve access to distributed data that
resided in multiple independent silos across the company. Working with
Enterprise Information Integration software provider Avaki, IBM built a Grid
solution that provides Sinopec with easier access to data, improved storage
capabilities and reduced total cost of ownership.
- Yurion (Asia-Pacific) -- A leading Korean provider of streaming audio for
portable devices, this subsidiary of iRiver, the world's largest MP3 maker,
turned to IBM for a high-performance Grid capable of supporting 100,000
concurrent users and 200TB of storage. The Grid includes IBM eServer
BladeCenter and eServer xSeries servers, as well as IBM TotalStorage, SAN
Volume Controller and TotalStorage FAStT storage systems.
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