Blade Employs Cell BE Processor

Based on the IBM Cell BE (Broadband Engine) processor, the Dual Cell-Based Blade is designed to address computationally intensive applications in aerospace and defense, seismic, semiconductor test, medical imaging and other markets. Taking advantage of IBM's BladeCenter design, the blade will offer peak performance of 400 GFLOPS and feature two IBM Cell BE processors, as well as XDR memory from Rambus Inc. In keeping with the company's strategy to leverage open standards where available, the Dual Cell-Based Blade software environment will run on the Linux OS, and the company will provide the Eclipse-based open source software framework necessary to harness the processing power of the Cell processor architecture— integrating the compilers, debuggers, math libraries, utilities and middleware in a seamless fashion. Scalable to seven blades in a 7U configuration, the blade is expected to provide up to 2.8 teraFLOPS of processing performance in a 7U form factor and up to 16 teraFLOPS in a six-foot rack. Availability of the Dual Cell-Based Blade is planned for Q1 2006, and production is planned for the following quarter. For more information, contact MERCURY COMPUTER SYSTEMS INC., Chelmsford, MA. (866) 627-6951.