Game chip powers up Wall St, Hollywood

International Business Machines Corp, the largest computer-services provider, is making lower-cost supercomputers for Wall Street firms and movie studios using chips designed for video-game consoles.

The BladeCenter QS22 uses a new generation of the chip developed for Sony Corp's PlayStation 3. The machine is five times faster and has 16 times more memory than IBM's earlier offering, the Armonk, New York-based company said.

IBM is making supercomputers affordable to businesses in a bid to boost hardware sales, which sagged 6.7 percent last quarter. The company's share of the supercomputer market increased to 46 percent in November 2007 from 26 percent in 2002, according to the Top500 Project, a supercomputer tracking group.

"IBM has doubled its share of supercomputer shipments through research and development," Dan Olds, an analyst with Beaverton, Oregon-based Gabriel Consulting Group, said. "The market is growing by 15 percent to 19 percent a year in shipments."

IBM, Sony and Toshiba Corp jointly developed the original PlayStation 3 chip in 2006 at IBM's research lab in Austin, Texas. Their rivals in the processor market include Nvidia Corp, Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

The new processor, the PowerXCell 8i, also will be used in IBM's Roadrunner supercomputer, its highest-performance computer for government use. Roadrunner will be used at the US Energy Department's Los Alamos National Laboratory in June.

Threshold Animation Studios Inc, a Santa Monica, California-based film company, will use the new computer to produce at least 18 pictures, including Food Fight, a movie featuring the voice of Charlie Sheen that will be released this year.

Platform Computing Inc, a Markham, Ontario-based software maker, is using the technology to speed up financial transactions across global markets. Simudyne UK Ltd, which makes simulation programs, will use it to help oil and gas companies locate reserves.

Agencies

(China Daily 05/14/2008 page17)