IBM to turbo-charge more servers with accelerators

08.10.2010
IBM is putting more energy in building computers that mix CPUs with specialized accelerators to diversify its servers and target specific workloads, an IBM executive said this week.

Servers based on generic CPU designs may be good for certain applications, but IBM wants to add homegrown co-processors and specialized circuits to accelerate certain tasks, said Jai Menon, CTO of IBM's Systems and Technology Group, during an interview.

The company will continue to offer commodity servers with x86 processors, but it will also increasingly offer server configurations and appliances optimized for specific applications such as medicine, cloud computing and transaction processing.

"One size really doesn't fit all," Menon said. "It isn't really the case that x86 is the right answer for everything, or Power is the right answer for everything."

The company has taken some steps in that direction, offering servers designed around certain applications. The company offers the Cloudburst appliance, which aims to speed application deployment to cloud and virtualized environments. It also offers Nvidia graphics processors alongside CPUs in certain blade servers to accelerate scientific and mathematical applications.

IBM is now developing new chips and reprogrammable circuits that can offload other tasks from the CPU, Menon said. The company is also creating a new programming language that will work in tandem with the accelerators to boost system performance.