News

Game Chips, Now in Business Computers Too

February 9, 2006

IBM is launching the all new business computers based on the game chips. It will start shipping in April a kind of blade built on a 31-watt Xeon processor that cuts the blade server's power use by about half. Along with this, IBM also announced IBM coupled that its new BladeCenter H offering, would have a high-end blade product based on a chip previously used in gaming systems, its nine-core Cell processor.

The Cell-based system, developed in collaboration with Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp., is aimed at the high performance of the systems of such consumers who use visualization in such areas as medical imaging, design, and oil and natural gas exploration. At a demonstration held yesterday, the visitors in fact used a joystick to navigate terrain renderings-an experience that was quite similar to the gaming system. But IBM is also paying attention to the users who need to process large amounts of data for business intelligence or financial calculations.

IBM isn't announcing pricing for the cell-based blades, which have two processors, because they will be targeted at vertical markets and likely sold as part of a system that includes software. IBM sees its PC blade development as an integral part of its overall BladeCenter strategy and intends to include workload management functions that will allow users to move computing resources from clients to servers -- something users may want to do when clients are shut down for the evening.

Source: ComputerWorld