IBM unveils the ASCI White

By Staff -- Purchasing, 8/24/2000

IBM has introduced a commercial version of asci White-the most powerful supercomputer in the world. The new RS/6000 SP system uses copper microprocessors, silicon switching technology and advanced software to provide e-businesses with unmatched processing speed, scalability and reliability. It is aimed at a wide range of companies from dot.com startups to large corporate data centers.

The U.S. Department of Energy has already bought the RS/6000 SP supercomputer-the classified asci White system announced last month. Dedicated to simulating nuclear testing, the DOE machine is the fastest supercomputer ever built.

asci White contains more than 8,100 microprocessors and is capable of processing 12.3 trillion calculations per second-30,000 times faster than an average personal computer. The SP's performance makes it ideal for handling workloads like Web-serving, business intelligence and large parallel databases, as well as for consolidating large numbers of smaller servers. More than 70% of all IBM supercomputers sold are used for commercial applications.

The SP's massively parallel architecture enables e-businesses, beginning with as few as two processors, to rack and stack hundreds or thousands of computing modules and manage them to ensure optimum utilization and continuous availability.

Semiconductor foundries will add 50% more capacity this year and another 50% next year, but it probably won't be enough to avoid a severe foundry capacity shortage by 2003, according to Semico Research.

Growing demand from fabless semiconductor companies and semiconductor companies that have fabs but are outsourcing production will result in the capacity shortage. Many leading chip companies such as Motorola, Lucent, National and LSI are using foundries to increase their flexibility and to keep up with leading-edge process technology. Some of the companies reduced capital spending in the 1998 downturn and have turned to foundries because they now can't keep up with demand for their chips.

Fabless companies such as Altera, Xilinx and Sandisk are experiencing high demand for their products as well because of the proliferation of digital consumer and communications products.