INDUSTRY

Armonk, NY -- IBM today announced that Paradigm, a provider of advanced petroleum geoscience and drilling technology, has purchased three IBM supercomputers to create deep underground oil reservoir images that are significantly more accurate than today's best models. Dubbed "Blue Gold," the supercomputers are comprised of BladeCenter™ systems, which pack massive computing power in a small footprint. "In today’s volatile markets, and the increasing complexity of geological regions, oil companies are searching for ways to drive down their exploration and development costs. Paradigm’s advanced Focus processing software, GeoDepth velocity modeling and depth imaging system, and Earth Domain Imaging migrations are able to produce extremely accurate images of the earth’s interior, which can translate into millions of dollars saved in exploration costs," said Elie Barr, President and Chief Operating Officer of Paradigm. "The IBM BladeCenter system enables us to run our projects in a timely and thus cost effective manner, which would not otherwise be possible." The high performance of the BladeCenter system helps Paradigm’s service teams deliver accurate project results with unprecedented speed. Paradigm also enjoys significant cost savings from the IBM system, both upfront and long-term, since the BladeCenter footprint fits an office environment, and is designed to require less power and cooling. The new supercomputers consist of several hundred IBM BladeCenter nodes that have been installed in the company's Houston, Texas; Woking, UK; Moscow, Russia and Mumbai, India offices. IBM’s global support system was an additional factor in the decision to equip Paradigm offices worldwide with these powerful clusters. The IBM eServer BladeCenter running on Linux now features the powerful Xeon processor at 3.06GHz. "IBM's intimate knowledge of the petroleum industry, combined with our supercomputing expertise, provides customers like Paradigm with the technology to transform their business," said David Turek, Vice President, IBM Deep Computing. "Spanning three continents, ’Blue Gold’ will dramatically improve researchers’ understanding of not only where petroleum is located, but also how the reservoirs will change over time."