IBM Extends its leadership in high performance computing

This week IBM achieved a triple honor in high performance computing, earning three of the top four spots on the TOP500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers. In total, we actually have five of the top ten systems. This is a rare accomplishment, and one in which we should all take pride. The significance of this achievement extends beyond the TOP500 honors, as our commercial clients are increasingly attracted to our high performance computing solutions to drive more business insights and analytics workloads to succeed in a new generation of big data environments.

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) Lawrence Livermore National Lab's IBM supercomputer, named Sequoia, was ranked as the world’s most powerful computing system, earning the number one position on the TOP500 list.  This BlueGene/Q system is driven by our POWER architecture.  Sequoia set a world record for computing speed, clocking in at over 16 sustained petaflops. That metric represents an astounding 16,000 trillion calculations per second; a first of a kind achievement in computing that opens up exciting new possibilities in areas like modeling and simulations for life sciences, public safety, financial services, energy and transportation.

In addition, another IBM POWER architecture system, the United States' Department of Energy’s Argonne National Lab’s Mira supercomputer, was ranked number three on the TOP500 list.  Researchers around the world use blocks of compute time on Mira to make advances in science and industry that range from studying the evolution of the universe to designing more-efficient electric car batteries.

Finally, the System x iDataPlex at the Leibniz Rechenzentrum (LRZ) Supercomputing Center in Germany was named the fastest system in Europe, ranking number four on the TOP500 list. Beyond its incredible speed, what makes this system unique is that it consumes 40 percent less energy than traditional systems in its class.  It does this by using IBM’s innovative hot water cooling technology that eliminates the need for air cooling systems found in most data centers.

While IBM will continue to push the boundaries at the elite end of the high performance computing market, we are also committed to providing our clients with commercially available solutions to meet their technical computing needs.  This balanced approached is enhanced by recently-announced offerings that take advantage of software from our acquisition of Platform Computing to deliver technical computing solutions for businesses of all sizes.  We’re investing in this area because it is an important growth opportunity for IBM.  Technical computing is more than a $20 billion market growing at more than 7.6% annually, according to IDC.  IBM’s focus here aligns to where our customers are heading to solve smarter computing challenges and capture new value from an explosion of big data.


 
By Rodney Adkins (IBM senior vice president, STG) , Monday 18 June
From  https://w3-connections.ibm.com/blogs/a3409f14-570b-4068-b0e2-f34ba37b17e5/entry/draft?lang=en_us