IBM Announces European Cloud Computing Hub in Dublin

DUBLIN, IRELAND and ARMONK, NY - 19 Mar 2008: Today IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland (IDA Ireland) announced the establishment of Europe's first Cloud Computing Center. Located in Dublin, the new facility will serve as a hub that will deliver Cloud Computing research and services to a number of satellite facilities to be built in Europe, Middle East and Africa. IBM experts from these centers will work directly with clients in the region, helping them adopt cloud computing solutions that spur technology research and business development.

One of the Dublin center's first offerings for clients, called IBM Idea Factory for Cloud Computing, is a new service delivered directly to clients over a cloud computing environment. Using Web 2.0 technology, it allows communities of business professionals to be assembled into social networks to facilitate the development of new business ideas. IBM Idea Factory for Cloud Computing captures business processes -- from their beginnings as ideas to commercialization -- speeding up brainstorming among employees, partners, software developers and other third party participants.

"The selection of Ireland as the location for IBM's European hub for Cloud Computing highlights Ireland's role as an important contributor to IBM's global research, development and innovation strategy," said Micheál Martin TD, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment for the Irish government. "The investment further establishes IBM Ireland's growing reputation as a high performance computing centre within IBM Corporation. IDA Ireland and IBM have a proactive long-standing relationship in advancing the Irish business and the implementation of strategic high value knowledge-based research and development investments."

"Our investments in cloud computing are a prime example of how IBM is seeking out emerging global market opportunities and new computing models that benefit IBM clients," said Steve Mills, Senior Vice President and Group Executive, IBM Software Group. "Through this new facility and the cloud computing model, the wealth of talent at IBM's software lab in Ireland will be accessible to not only the rest of Europe, but Africa and the Middle East as well."

Cloud computing is an information technology (IT) infrastructure in which dynamically shared computing resources are virtualized and accessed as a service. Cloud computing replaces the traditional data center model in which companies own and manage their own stand alone hardware and software systems. Cloud computing is an attractive proposition for small to large-sized companies. It also is a green technology model that reduces energy consumption by improving IT resource utilization, therefore requiring fewer servers to handle equivalent workloads.

The need for cloud computing is fueled by the dramatic growth in business collaboration, connected devices, real-time data streams, and Web 2.0 applications such as streaming media and entertainment, social networking and mobile commerce.

The first client of the center at Dublin will be the Sogeti Group, a specialist provider of Local Professional IT Services. Sogeti plans to use the IBM Idea Factory for Cloud Computing, providing its employees around the world with the technology to collectively brainstorm online and generate new ideas about building the "Sogeti of the Future."

"Innovation is at the heart of every successful company," said Michiel Boreel, CTO of Sogeti. "By utilizing IBM Cloud Computing Center resources, we expect to generate a wealth of real-world solutions for accelerating Sogeti's international growth and delivering step-change for our clients. Another positive benefit is increased interaction and collaboration between our consultants around the world, as well as hands-on experience with this leading-edge computing power."

"Responding to demand in the market, we are moving fast to build an integrated cloud computing operation. We are adding Europe's first Cloud Computing Center at Dublin and more facilities into a network of existing centers in China, Vietnam and the U.S. The centers can bring skills and expertise to serve our clients in building their own new enterprise data centers," said Dr. Willy Chiu, Vice President of High Performance On Demand Solutions, IBM Software Group. With such a network of centers, Dr. Chiu pointed out, "We will also address the need for open interoperability standards."

The IBM High Performance on Demand Solutions Lab will work with IDA Ireland to build this center using IBM's "Blue Cloud" technologies, a series of cloud computing offerings based on industry open standards and open source software. IBM Tivoli systems management software will manage the Cloud Computing environment.

The center will place a focus on innovation and research activities. As part of its ongoing educational initiatives, IBM has also agreed to facilitate cloud computing training for lecturers at the Dublin Institute of Technology's School of Computing. The training will help the school to foster new skills that meet the needs of this emerging computing model.

IBM Cloud Computing Milestones
IBM has been expanding its cloud computing capabilities around the world. Over the past year, IBM has provided cloud computing services to clients such as China Telecom, Wuxi Municipal Government of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam and others. IBM also launched "Blue Cloud," a series of cloud computing offerings, and entered into partnerships for cloud computing programs with a number of partners in Europe.

For more information about IBM cloud computing, please visit http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/zones/hipods/

tag: Cloud Computing, IBM Idea Factory, Web 2.0 technology, social networks, HPC centre, Tivoli, China Telecom, Wuxi Municipal Government of China, Blue Cloud,

CPU Core Wars Heat Up Again With AMD Quad Core Barcelona Release

The Holland Computing Center at the University of Nebraska has tripled its computing power in a grid/cluster system just by replacing dual core CPUs with Quad Core CPUs.

Even after considerable delays, Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD) quad-core Barcelona chip becomes accessible to you and me after being released in April, it can not rest. It will have play catch up to Intel again as six-core processor was announced. (Intel revealed that a six-core processor, Dunnington will be available in the second half of this year.)

Although AMD initially planned to release the Barcelona at the end of 2007, AMD held back after discovering a problems at hig workloads. Instead of fixing or patching things at higher level, AMD decided to fix it at the Silicon level giving users a better performing trouble free computing.

tag: AMD Barcelona, The Holland Computing Center, quad-core Barcelona, Intel Dunnington

CERN Project Choses Supermicro SuperBlade™ Servers

SAN JOSE, California, March 4, 2008 - Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a leader in application-optimized, high performance server solutions, today announced that its dual-processor (DP) SuperBlade™ servers were recently chosen by CERN (one of the world's largest research labs) for part of a significant upgrade of its computing capacity for the new LHC (Large Hadron Collider) project in Geneva. High computational performance, excellent scalability, superior energy efficiency and a competitive price/performance ratio were key factors in this prestigious selection process.

"Our success on previous CERN projects, coupled with Supermicro's industry-leading blade server technology, enabled us to distinguish ourselves from the competition," said Charles Liang, CEO and president of Supermicro. "Ideal for HPC clusters and data centers, Supermicro SuperBlade platforms deliver unsurpassed performance, computing density and energy efficiency, which saves operational costs (lower total cost of ownership) and also helps preserve our environment for future generations."

"As one of the world's leading international research centers, we are always looking to meet an ever-growing demand for computing performance, striving for maximum performance over total cost of ownership," said Helge Meinhard, coordinator for server and storage procurements, of CERN. "This is even more true this year when the LHC will start operating and producing an estimated 15 Petabytes of data each year that need to be processed. With these blade server platforms, we can efficiently realize a significant increase in computational power while minimizing our operational costs."

This latest CERN project deploys 210 Supermicro SuperBlade servers equipped with Intel® Xeon® Quad-Core processors. These servers feature Supermicro's industry-leading high-efficiency (93%*) power supplies, which help significantly increase overall system power savings.

As with some previous CERN projects, Supermicro worked closely with E4 Computer Engineering S.p.A., a highly respected supplier of major Italian and European computation and scientific research centers. Together with the supply of some storage systems, the monetary value of this order exceeds one million Euros, and it also means that E4 has now provided over 1500 total servers to CERN.

"We are proud to work with Supermicro to provide its SuperBlade solutions to CERN, one of the world's largest and most established centers for scientific research, " said Vincenzo Nuti, CEO of E4 Computer Engineering. "Supermicro's blade technology is among the best in the world, our partnership with them has already achieved great results and I am sure that, thanks to the combination of E4's know-how and Supermicro's technology, we will continue to obtain extraordinary outcomes."

Supermicro Server Building Block Solutions® offer exceptional flexibility and outstanding feature advantages. For more information on Supermicro's complete line of server and workstation solutions go to www.supermicro.com.

tag: Computational Performance, Scalability, CERN, HPC, Large Hadron Collider, SuperBlade,

Smart Grid applications Within The Grid, With BPL technology From DS2.

BPL technology is used to deliver broadband services, including Internet access, VoIP, Muni WiFi, video surveillance, traffic monitoring and air quality monitoring. Smart Grid technology is used by electricity utilities for grid management applications such as outage prevision and management, advanced metering, preventive maintenance, asset management and optimisation and load management and control. Both BPL and Smart Grid applications share the same electrical network and benefit from DS2's new Alma 4.0, specifically the unique frequency translation and frequency division repeating to support network planning requirements for large networks. In addition, Alma 4.0 improves network manageability by extending SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) controls tailored for grid management.
Alma 4.0 improves network manageability by extending simple network management protocol controls tailored for grid management.

Valencia, Spain, 3rd, March, 2008 - DS2, the leading technology innovator and global supplier of high-speed powerline communications technology, today announced the availability of a new networking solution for Broadband Powerline Communications (BPL) and Smart Grid applications. The new Alma 4.0 firmware meets the network planning and manageability requirements for commercial BPL services and reliable Smart Grid applications.

The solution, available as a firmware upgrade, benefits from a new modular architecture that promotes code reuse and reduces the development cycle while allowing product developers greater access to advance on-chip features for customization and product differentiation. Performance is enhanced by up to 20 per cent which increases average throughput in the network for Broadband applications and provides unmatched resilience to impairments, such as noise on MV and LV overhead electricity lines to meet the stringent reliability requirements of Smart Grid applications.

BPL technology is used to deliver broadband services, including Internet access, VoIP, Muni WiFi, video surveillance, traffic monitoring and air quality monitoring. Smart Grid technology is used by electricity utilities for grid management applications such as outage prevision and management, advanced metering, preventive maintenance, asset management and optimisation and load management and control. Both BPL and Smart Grid applications share the same electrical network and benefit from DS2's new Alma 4.0, specifically the unique frequency translation and frequency division repeating to support network planning requirements for large networks. In addition, Alma 4.0 improves network manageability by extending SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) controls tailored for grid management.

Chano Gomez, VP Marketing DS2 stated: "Overhead, low-voltage powerlines are widely deployed because they are generally the cheapest means of delivering electricity. On the other hand, they present specific challenges when used for two-way digital communication as they are highly exposed to external interferences including noise sources due to poor connections and environmental factors like temperature and humidity. DS2 has worked extensively for the last year in close partnership with its customers to analyse and characterise the channel conditions and the other elements in the network to develop a solution that meets market requirements."

"The new Alma 4.0 firmware offers greater resilience to impairments enabling the roll out of robust, commercial grade BPL services and Smart Grid applications for powerline operators and utility applications, particularly in rural areas underserved by other broadband access technologies," stated, S.H. Kim, CTO, Kaicom.

"DS2's new firmware Alma 4.0 is the only robust solution for Smart Grid applications that offers electricity companies a solution to maximise the benefits offered by the capillarity of the electricity network to effectively manage the most dense network, and to significantly increase energy efficiency while simultaneously improving the way in which millions of users connect to the Internet. We believe that this solution positions DS2 technology to become the core of the Smart Grid revolution," said Scott E. Lee, President and CEO, IBEC.

tag: Broadband Powerline Communications, BPL, Smart Grid applications, DS2, Internet access, VoIP, Muni WiFi, video surveillance, traffic monitoring, air quality monitoring, Alma 4.0,