OCF wins £3m IBM supercomputing deal

High-performance computing VAR to roll out 8,000-processor machine for Southampton University

Supercomputer will be used in areas such as cancer research

Reseller OCF has been tasked with building one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers in an ambitious £3m project for Southampton University.

The 8,000-processor machine, which is based on IBM’s iDataPlex technology, will rank among the world’s top 100 supercomputers based on recent rankings.

It will be used to make highly complex computations in fields ranging from cancer research to climate change.

The deal, which super-computing specialist OCF won earlier this month, is worth £1.8m to Big Blue.

Southampton University’s deputy vice-chancellor Philip Nelson is confident the project would increase his establishment’s academic standing.

“This significant investment will ensure that our researchers have computing facilities to rival the best in the world,” he said.

The current list of the world’s top supercomputers is dominated by machines in the US and Germany. From a vendor perspective IBM secures bragging rights having made two of the top three supercomputers, the more powerful of which is capable of a cool 1.105 pataflops/s.

Capable of over 74 trillion calculations a second, Southampton University’s elite machine will make it into the top 100. It will be the first IBM System iDataPlex in a UK university.