IBM, National Laboratories Partner to Advance Big Data Research

IBM has been awarded contracts valued at over $300 million to develop and deliver the world’s most advanced data-centric supercomputing systems. The company is partnering with Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories to build the systems.

For the past five years, IBM researchers have created a data-centric approach to systems, which embeds compute power everywhere data resides in the system, allowing for a convergence of analytics, modeling, visualization and simulation.

The laboratories anticipate these systems will be five to 10 times better for performance on commercial and high-performance computing applications than current computers, a press release states.

These OpenPOWER-based systems will be capable of moving data at more than 17 petabytes per second. It will help the laboratories with science and national security applications as well as health care, manufacturing, engineering and oil and gas. The systems will also be used for mission-critical missions and help the next major phase in the U.S. Department of Energy’s scientific computing roadmap to exascale computing.

“Today’s announcement marks a dramatic departure from traditional supercomputing approaches that are no longer viable as data grows at enormous rates. IBM’s Data Centric approach is a new paradigm in computing, marking the future of open computing platforms and capable of addressing the growing rates of data,” said Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president, IBM Systems and Technology Group. “The beauty of the systems being developed for Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge is that the core technologies are available today to organizations of many sizes across many industries.”

For more information, visit IBM.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.