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IBM and NCSA end their Blue Waters affair, go back to just being supercomputing friends
It seems that IBM and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois have hit a snag in their once fruitful relationship. After nearly four years of partnering for the Blue Waters petascale supercomputer, the NCSA's recently released a joint statement explaining that IBM's "terminated" its involvement with the project. If you'll recall, IBM was supplying its latest Power7 rigs to get all that data flowing, but the company's now decided that Ol' Blue will require more resources than initially anticipated. Apparently, there were talks to try and keep the spark alive, but since those fell through both have decided to return each others CDs and hoodies assets involved with the project (per contract terms): IBM gives back the money, while the NCSA returns any hardware supplied. The two plan on remaining in touch for future endeavours, and the NCSA doesn't appear to be too down either as it'll be consulting with the National Science Foundation to keep Blue Waters afloat. You'll find the official statement in the source link below, but we've included a video rendition of how we'd like to imagine it past the break. [Photo credit: kosheahan]
NCSA prepares for Blue Waters petascale supercomputer, and we've got the video to prove it
How often do you get to see an unboxing of this magnitude? Our buddy Bill at the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois) has been kind enough to hit us up with a video that shows the arrival and installation of the facility's new IBM 780 hardware at the National Petascale Computing Facility. This hardware will allow scientists to prep code in anticipation of the Blue Waters -- which, as previously reported, will be the largest publicly accessible supercomputer in the world when it goes online in 2011, thanks to its over 16,000 Power7 nodes. Video after the break.
IBM developing 10 petaflop supercomputer, Power7 to ship next year
The last we heard, IBM was hard at work on its Power7 processor. Now the company's announcing that the thirty-two core chip -- and copious amounts of eDRAM -- are at the heart of its newest supercomputing project. To be housed at the University of Illinois, IBM's Blue Waters will be the largest publicly accessible supercomputer in the world when it goes online in 2011, theoretically capable of achieving 16 petaflop speeds by connecting up to 16,384 Power7 nodes, although IBM said that initially the theoretical peak performance will likely be closer to 10 petaflops -- with more realistic sustained real-world performance near one petaflop. To keep things from overheating, a system was devised that includes water-cooling for the whole rack, including the processor itself. But why should government agencies and large corporations have all the fun? According to CNET, IBM plans to ship Power7 processors with commercial server products sometime next year.
