IBM helps to establish university multicore supercomputing center

In Baltimore, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is surely celebrating as IBM is helping to crate a Multicore Computing Center (MC2) to focus on supercomputing research related to aerospace/defense, financial services, medical imaging and weather/climate change prediction.

IBM said it awarded UMBC a significant gift to support the development of this new center, which researchers describe as an “orchestra” of one of the world’s most powerful supercomputing chips.

The MC2 will contain a high-performance computational test laboratory based on the IBM/Sony/Toshiba Cell Broadband Engine.

One of the challenges for researchers at the MC2 will be making clusters consisting of hundreds of the powerful information engines run effectively together, IBM noted.

Cells have a wide range of capability and are able to serve as engines for image and video-intensive computing tasks like virtual reality, simulations and imaging for aerospace, medicine and defense; high-definition TV and high-speed video for wireless devices; and highly complex physics based computer models to better predict weather, climate change and biochemistry.

The MC2 is expected to be installed and operational by this fall.