Cell Computer now available to Public.

Want your own Cell Computer? Got a blade center chassis sitting around?

Now you can have a Cell computer... (below edited for brevity and blather)

IBM today announced that it is making its first computing system based on the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE) generally available on a global basis, with early adopters such as University of Manchester, RapidMind, Inc. and Fraunhofer Institute deploying compute-intensive applications on early ship versions.

The IBM BladeCenter QS20 is a Cell BE-based blade system designed for businesses that can benefit from high performance computing power and the unique capabilities of the Cell BE processor to run graphic-intensive applications. (snip)

Based on the Power Architecture, the Cell BE was originally developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba for use in gaming consoles. Cell BE's breakthrough multi-core architecture and ultra high-speed communications capabilities deliver vastly improved, real-time response effectively delivering 'supercomputer-like performance' by incorporating IBM's advanced multi-processing technologies usually reserved for the company's most sophisticated servers.

Beta versions of the IBM BladeCenter QS20 are already in use at customer sites across the U.S., as well as in the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, France, Japan and Korea.

Early deployments include the University of Manchester, the United Kingdom's largest single-site university (snip)

Another early adopter is RapidMind, Inc., a Waterloo, Canada-based development platform company which enables software developers to quickly and effectively take advantage of a new generation of high performance processors. (snip)

Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics is a German-based research institution, specializing in providing high performance computing research results in mathematics, material research, and mechanical engineering to industries across the globe. "We are using IBM's new BladeCenter QS20 as an ideal platform to develop software for emerging multicore system, and dramatically improve our own in house visualization applications," said Dr. Franz-Josef Pfreundt, Head of the Competence Center for HPC and Visualization, Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics. (snip)

The combination of IBM's BladeCenter system with the Cell BE processor is an example of IBM's continued collaboration with clients to help them create breakthrough solutions using IBM technology and expertise. Last year, IBM announced it is collaborating with Mercury Computer Systems to enable them to build Cell BE-based solutions targeted at multiple industries. IBM will also continue to work with the broader community through Blade.org, Power.org and open standards to bring additional Cell BE-based solutions to market.

(snip)
The IBM BladeCenter QS20 based on Cell BE will be delivered via IBM's System Cluster 1350. The System Cluster 1350 has established a remarkable reputation in the High Performance Computing community as the flagship Linux cluster offering from IBM and is featured prominently in the latest Top 500 Supercomputers listings. The System Cluster 1350 from IBM offers a wide variety of server, processor, and switching technology choices and is completely warranted by IBM as a single support source. For more information on the IBM BladeCenter QS20, log on to http://www-03.ibm.com/technology/splash/qs20.
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Del Cecchi
"This post is my own and doesn’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.”
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