INDUSTRY

ARMONK, NY -- IBM was the leading vendor of the most powerful supercomputers in the first quarter of 2002, according to the International Data Corporation's worldwide high performance computing segment revenue report. In the quarter, IBM's revenue share of the machines that solve the largest and most demanding scientific problems was 42.7 percent, a 9.8 point jump from the previous-year quarter, according to IDC. "In designing and building very powerful supercomputers, IBM develops industry-leading technologies that are ultimately integrated into the broad spectrum of IBM servers and other products," said Surjit Chana, vice president of marketing, IBM eServer pSeries. "By continuing to develop innovative and very powerful machines-- like the IBM eServer p690-- IBM is positioned for continued leadership in this important space." IBM also had the most systems of any vendor on IDC's list of the world's most powerful supercomputers, published earlier this month. IBM nearly doubled the number of machines posted by the second place company--the combined Hewlett-Packard/Compaq. The IDC list contains 304 IBM systems, compared with 171 for Hewlett-Packard/Compaq and 89 for Sun Microsystems. The IDC ranking echoes the results of the TOP500 List of Supercomputers, published twice each year by supercomputing experts Jack Dongarra from the University of Tennessee and Erich Strohmaier and Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim (Germany). In the most recent TOP500 List, IBM systems accounted for 160 of the world's 500 most powerful high performance computers--more than any other vendor. For complete results, visit www.idc.com.