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Supercomputing for the masses
13/05/2008 12:01 - (SA)
Jessica Hodgson
San Francisco - International Business Machines Corp on Tuesday launched a computer which it says will make lower-cost supercomputing available at lower prices to specialised industries, including the financial services, digital media and medical sectors.
The IBM BladeCentre QS22 uses IBM' Cell Broadband Engine, a technology developed for video gaming, which can deliver speeds up to five times that of its predecessor for tasks that include MRI and CT scans, ray-tracing in digital media, and complex financial calculations, for roughly $10 000.
The QS22 will, with the right system configuration and memory, work about five times faster than the QS21 computer, said Jim Comfort, IBM's vice president for systems and technology. Its list price will begin at under $10 000, he said, depending on memory requirements, and it will be available from June.
"This brings a very dense computational engine onto a very small footprint," he said, adding that this was the first time the technology had been used inside IBM's BladeCentre.
BladeCentre is a type of server configuration which is designed to simplify installation and system management and, increasingly, to provide better cooling. "The QS22 is tuned for financial services, the petroleum industry and digital media."
Dan Olds, a research principal with Gabriel Consulting Group, said that the processor would be able to process CT scans in around two seconds, compared with the current time of around six minutes, and is particularly suitable for complex calculations such as Black-Scholes options pricing models.
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