THE TIMES OF INDIA TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2003 IBM unveils giant computing grid in China REUTERS BEIJING: International Business Machines Corp unveiled in China on Monday the company's most powerful computing grid ever, tapping the nascent computing trend in one of the world's fastest-growing technology markets. The China grid system, a cluster of servers and computers linked through the Internet to achieve superior computing speeds, will be capable of performing 15 trillion calculations per second, IBM said in a statement. The grid's computing power is expected to be second only to the Japanese government's Earth Simulator supercomputer, a $500 million machine that crunches more than 35 trillion calculations per second, it said. IBM's system, which runs on the open-source Linux software, will link nearly 100 universities and 10,000 students in China when it is completed, it said. "This seems to be mostly a brand-building project for IBM. It will promote the company among students and universities, big buyers in the computer market," said Grace Lin, a computer analyst at Shanghai-based Capital International Holdings. IBM declined to give a value for the grid deal, saying only it had donated $2.3 million worth of servers to a handful of universities. It said the universities had purchased a total of 49 IBM eServer xSeries running Linux, six units of pSeries servers and its TotalStorage FAStT200 servers for storing data. The grid would use its computing power to help link students to online courses and to process data related to the flu-like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which has killed more than 700 people around the world. IBM, which opened its Chinese office in 1992, said earlier this year it wanted to promote its grid computing servers and products for use by large companies. Grid computing, also known as distributed computing, has so far been most popular with research institutions. The firm has also been trying to broaden acceptance of the Linux operating system, a competitor to Microsoft Corp's Windows. IBM, with about 4.3 per cent of the China personal computer market in the first quarter of 2003, has said the emerging field of grid computing was one of its key growth areas. It has touted commercial uses for the technology, which allows companies and institutions to tap into a network of computers to cut costs. Copyright © 2003 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.