Hardware

Mainframes and Supercomputers Topic Center

Mainframe and supercomputer news, in-depth analysis and more

Cray courts the big-data market

Supercomputer company Cray has created a new division that will sell big-data systems, the company has announced. The division will market its offerings to large enterprises, which will be a new kind of client for the company.
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IBM's Watson Advises at Cancer Center

The Watson supercomputer is about to begin evaluating cancer treatment options that can be delivered to physicians in a matter of seconds.

IBM's Watson shows up for work at Cedars-Sinai's cancer center

IBM's Watson supercomputer is being used in the Cedars-Sinai cancer center to develop applications that will assist doctors in diagnosing and prescribing treatments for patients.

Russia building 10-petaflop supercomputer

T-Platforms, a Moscow-based tech company that is behind some of that nation's largest systems, is building a 10-petaflop supercomputer for M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, the company said this week.

Nvidia: Gaming systems to reach 'tens of teraflops' by 2019

Graphics processor maker Nvidia expects gaming systems will reach a performance of "tens of teraflops" by the end of the decade, and will be capable of displaying real-time visuals as good as the pre-rendered cut scenes found in games today, according to company CEO Jen-Hsun Huang.

Five reasons the U.S. tech lead is in danger

There is a worldwide race to build the next generation of supercomputers, but U.S. efforts have stalled.

Exascale computing seen in this decade

At the supercomputing conference in Seattle, there's an almost obsessive focus on developing an exascale computing system before the end of the decade.

Intel's 'Knights Corner' chip hits supercomputing speed

Intel has produced a new chip that can operate at a sustained speed of one teraflop -- the type of supercomputing speed the U.S. government paid $55 million for 15 years ago.

Intel pushes 50-core chip, mulls exascale computing

Intel is drumming up support for its latest 50-core Knights Corner and Xeon E5 server chips, which are key elements in the company's plans to scale performance while reducing power consumption moving toward an exascale supercomputer by 2018.

Amazon Web Services adds supercomputing service to its cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS) wants to attract more high-performance computing users to its cloud and has launched a public beta of Cluster Compute Eight Extra Large, its most powerful cloud service yet.

IT's most wanted: Mainframe programmers

As students study other technologies, vendors try to develop new talent and offer tools to fill the gap for these critical systems

Silver Surfers are past it? Never!

Been around a while? You may well be a "Silver surfer" and that makes you an IT hero!

You don't know tech: InfoWorld news quiz

Feb. 18, 2011: iPhones may get smaller, security firm gets unwelcome caller

Disruptors have lasting impact on IT

Major market shifts in the database world don't happen often. When they do, they're massive, creating an impact that can last 10 to 20 years. When I entered the job market, it was right at the tail end of the last major shift from the mainframe to client/server.

Looking for job security? Try Cobol

As long as there are mainframes, there will be Cobol. Learn the language and the culture and you might land a job that that lasts until retirement

Looking for job security? Try Cobol

As long as there are mainframes, there will be Cobol. Learn the language and the culture and you might land a job that that lasts until retirement

The 11 most influential microprocessors of all time

From the brains of the Voyager space mission to the inspiration for modern CPUs, here are the chips that built our modern technological culture.

Now Departing: Union Pacific's 40-Year-Old Mainframe

Union Pacific, the railroad company that transports chemicals, coal, food, minerals and automobiles in and around 23 Western U.S. states, has had two workhorses that toiled tirelessly for the past four decades: the diesel locomotive and the IBM mainframe.

Things CIOs Must Know About Mainframe Modernization

1. Mainframe shops have to make decisions: whether to migrate to other platforms, add service-oriented architecture (SOA) interfaces or rewrite applications. With a half-baked strategy, IT winds up "bolting on all sorts of unusual, often architecturally inelegant" work-arounds, argues John B. Rabon, manager of legacy modernization at Aflac. "We saw this happening. You hit this wall of unintended consequences." Aflac is now 60 percent finished with a major conversion initiative.

Swine flu spreads, Apple hires, Twitter hack

Hands down, the swine-flu outbreak captured the headlines this week (and led to some obviously hysterically hyped headlines along the way). Amid the speculation about how much havoc the new virus will wind up wreaking on the world, there also was some more moderated speculation about what Apple is up to in hiring a bunch of chip designers. Oh, and another high-profile Twitter account was hacked ... again.