FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
IBM Offers High Performance Computing Outside the Lab
New BladeCenter QS22 Delivers Supercomputing Power for
Everything from Financial Trading to Oil-Field Discovery
ARMONK, N.Y. (May 13, 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™
(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™ 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:
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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.
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Platform Computing’s ‘Symphony’ offers a reliable and scalable HPC
infrastructure for performing lightening-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.
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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-perwatt and better manages power draw from the overall server chassis from previous
generations, thanks to some key built-in features:
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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.
The new QS22 complements all other IBM BladeCenter offerings, such as those based on
Intel® Xeon®, AMD Opteron™ and IBM Power™ processors. IBM BladeCenter is the broadest
portfolio of blade offerings in the industry, designed to address a range of client environments
like those for small and medium business, telecommunications and – with the QS22 in
particular -- high performance computing. By utilizing the PowerXCell 8i processor, the QS22
also allows IT managers to evaluate how much of an application would need the
supercomputing power of the Cell/B.E. Architecture and how much could remain on a
traditional system, providing the full range of options in the midst of other system priorities.
“The QS22 is a technological leap over the physical limitations of traditional processors
that often dampen the ability of organizations to reach their goals,” said Jim Comfort,
vice president, IBM Systems & Technology Group. “IBM has delivered on the promise
of integrating HPC into the business world in a way that allows developers, clients and IT
departments to ramp up quickly and get results without delay.”
All in the HPC Family
The QS22 is part of a robust family of HPC products at IBM, all designed to deliver a
holistic approach to computing that involves designing and delivering the fastest, highly
efficient, easily accessible technical solutions to clients. From the Cell Broadband Engine
Architecture-based BladeCenter QS22 to the Blue Gene supercomputer, to products like
IBM’s Power Systems, industry standard clusters and high-performance System Storage,
the HPC family at IBM is the result of a rich history of discovery and award-winning
innovation.
The QS22 will be available in early June, while the SDK for Multicore Acceleration v3 is
available now.
About IBM
For more information on the BladeCenter QS22, visit
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/info/bladecenter/qs22/index.html.
For more information on the Cell Broadband Engine, visit
http://www.ibm.com/technology/cell.
For more information on IBM’s High Performance Computing portfolio, visit
http://www.ibm.com/deepcomputing.
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