IBM's Triple Play

Petascaling

While the chips developed for Nintendo and Microsoft are still licensed exclusively to them, the Cell technology that IBM developed for Sony is set to take on a life of its own. For the Roadrunner supercomputer, designed and manufactured in Rochester in a collaboration between IBM and the Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico, engineers are building on Cell technology to create the world’s first petascale—as in “able to perform one thousand trillion calculations per second”—supercomputer. The Roadrunner, which will require 25 tractor-trailer trucks to be delivered to Los Alamos, will be used to ensure the safety and reliability of the United States’ nuclear weapons.

“John Kelly, our senior VP, has said gaming technology is driving IBM technology,” Schram says. “We wouldn’t have been able to build this supercomputer without the background we gained with the gaming chip.”

Cell is also playing a role in IBM’s development of technologies for medical imaging, oil research, aerospace, and other industries, according to Van Grinsven. “Any applications that benefit from real-time graphics processing, Cell will play well in,” she says.

IBM is building its future on technology initially developed for games. Meanwhile, its engineers are basking in the glow of esteem from their colleagues, but also something that seldom comes their way—a touch of “street cred.”

“I don’t think any of us thought we’d be involved in a project that would get so much buzz,” Schram says. “When we go to a high school and do mentoring now, kids actually care about what we do.”