Fresh from setting a supercomputer performance record,
IBM has announced it will make a commercial version of its Blue
Gene system available for businesses and scientific
researchers.
Called the IBM eServer Blue Gene, the Power-based system mixes
cooling and clustering technologies to achieve a performance of 5.7
teraflops from a machine that occupies less than one square metre
of floorspace.
Prices for the system, which is available now, start at $1.5m
(£810,000). For the first time users can also rent the system from
one of IBM's Deep Computing On Demand centres.
"We think this system will allow us to introduce a new class of
high-performance computing to industry-specific businesses and for
our clients to deliver better optimised functionality," said IBM
vice-president Colin Parris.
Parris said IBM was actively working with a number of industry
partners to deliver Blue Gene's capabilities to "key
marketplaces".
IBM has been working with partners over the past few years to
make Blue Gene flexible enough to handle a variety of different
computing workloads. IBM and a large number of national testing
labs and universities are working on a list of high-performance
computing applications in life sciences, financial modelling,
hydrodynamics, quantum chemistry, molecular dynamics, astronomy and
climate modelling.
Big Blue is also looking at more commercial applications
involving grid computing, business intelligence, manufacturing
processes, and risk and compliance.
The new system will be available in configurations ranging from
one to 64 racks. Partially populated racks with fewer than 1,024
nodes are also available.
Blue Gene was the result of a five-year project that cost $100m
in research alone, and started life as a research vehicle for
protein folding.
Ed Scannell writes for InfoWorld