In this quiet period of the year, BusinessWeek published two articles about the future supercomputers that IBM will build in the next couple of years. You can check a former column I wrote on these systems, "Faster Than The Speed Of Byte -- IBM's future supercomputers."
Let's listen to BusinessWeek's Ira Sager.
What's so remarkable about the IBM supercomputers isn't what they'll do. It's the way they'll do it. The lightning-fast machines will harness tens of thousands of powerful microprocessors -- something akin to jamming all the PCs in a small city into one box, wiring them together, and programming them to cooperate on a single problem.
The economics of high-performance computing is undergoing radical change. Traditionally, supercomputers have been expensive, highly customized designs purchased by a select group of customers. Now, the industry is being overhauled by mainstream technologies such as Intel chips, standard high-speed connections, and inexpensive storage networks that have become fast enough to handle many tasks. "A lot of what has been used to build commercial computers is being leveraged by supercomputer makers," says Brad Day, an analyst with researcher Giga Information Group.
As wrote the author, this is "bringing supercomputing to the masses."
The economics are enticing. General Motors (GM) went from a stable of some 34 supercomputers including powerful Cray machines to systems from IBM and Silicon Graphics comprising 1,400 off-the-shelf processors. GM has slashed its supercomputing bill by $7 million, according to Kirk Gutmann, a product-information officer for GM. The machines help the auto giant take new cars from final design to production in just 18 months, down from the 42 months it took several years ago.
Ira Sager's other story is "Blue Gene: IBM's Dream Machine." For more details, please read the two articles.
Source: Ira Sager, BusinessWeek Online, December 26, 2002
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