IBM establishes exascale research effort in Ireland

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IBM announced this week that it is partnering with the Industrial Development Agency (IDA) in Ireland on a new research effort to build an exascale computer

IBM logoIBM also declared its intent to break the exaflop barrier, and announced that it had created a research ‘collaboratory’ in Dublin, in partnership with the Industrial Development Agency (IDA) of Ireland, which is focused on both achieving exascale computing and making it useful to business. An exaflop is a million trillion calculations per second, which is 1000 times faster than today’s petaflop-class systems.

…This research collaboratory will enable IBM supercomputing and multidisciplinary experts to work directly with University researchers from Trinity College Dublin, Tyndall National Institute in Cork, National University of Ireland Galway, University College Cork and IRCSET, the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology to develop computing architectures and technologies that can overcome current limitations — such as space and energy consumption — of dealing with the massive volumes of real-time data and analysis.

The technical research will explore innovative ways of using new memory architectures, interconnecting technologies and fabric structures, and will evaluate business applications that would benefit from an exascale streaming platform.

Along with this announcement they included a tidbit about their Top500 performance that caught my eye

For a record-setting tenth consecutive time, an IBM system holds the number one position in the ranking of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. The IBM computer built for the “roadrunner project” at Los Alamos National Lab — the first in the world to operate at speeds faster than one quadrillion calculations per second (petaflop) — remains the world speed champion.

10 times doesn’t happen by accident. That’s the product of a real commitment to market leadership, good technology, and the bank roll necessary to make it happen.