SYSTEMS

Mercury Computer Systems announced the Dual Cell-Based Blade, Mercury's first product based on the IBM Cell BE (Broadband Engine) processor. As announced in June 2005, Mercury is partnering with IBM Engineering & Technology Services to integrate Cell technology into a range of products designed to address computationally intensive applications in aerospace and defense, seismic, semiconductor test, and medical imaging, as well as other markets. Availability of the Dual Cell-Based Blade is planned for Q1 of calendar 2006, and production is planned for the following quarter. The Dual Cell-Based Blade, based on IBM's industry-leading BladeCenter design, will offer unprecedented peak performance of 400 GFLOPS and feature two IBM Cell BE processors, as well as XDR memory from Rambus Inc. An online data sheet is available at its Web site. Detailed specifications of this product have been shared under NDA with various customers, and initial orders for early-access systems are anticipated in the near-term. In keeping with Mercury's strategy to leverage open standards where available, the Dual Cell-Based Blade software environment will run on the Linux OS, and Mercury will provide the Eclipse-based open source software framework necessary to harness the tremendous processing power of the Cell processor architecture -- integrating the compilers, debuggers, math libraries, utilities and middleware in a seamless fashion. Utilizing the open standards that IBM delivered through its development and offering of the BladeCenter ecosystem, the Dual Cell-Based Blade will be available in the IBM BladeCenter platform, which integrates server, storage, and networking functionality to provide upward scalability and performance density for computing needs in a variety of applications. Scalable to seven blades in a 7U configuration, the Dual Cell-Based 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. "We are delighted to get this product to market so quickly, and the Engineering & Technology Services unit at IBM has been instrumental in making this happen," said Randy Dean, vice president, Business and Technology Development at Mercury. "A number of customers are eager to have access to this breakthrough blade solution. Some of these customers plan to place the Dual Cell-Based Blade into production immediately, while others will leverage the system as an application development platform." "Through exceptional teamwork, Mercury and IBM are bringing innovative, advanced new products to customers. These solutions have the ability to transform not only business processes, but entire industries," said Raj Desai, vice president, Engineering & Technology Services, IBM. "The strength of the combined portfolio and skills allows this partnership to tackle and solve customers' most pressing computing problems with breakthrough solutions. Mercury's passion for enabling customer success mirrors that of the IBM team."