DNAprint Genomics (DNAG)

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OT: I realize this has nothing to do with DNAPrint, but read it anyway. It's about a new supercomputer on a chip that IBM is developing. Honestly, from the description of it's fundamental innovation I would swear they have modeled this after the method of organization of human DNA:

http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/030827/056910.html

Press Release Source: IBM

IBM Research to Collaborate With The University of Texas at Austin on Single-Chip Embedded Supercomputer
Wednesday August 27, 2:57 pm ET

AUSTIN, TX--(MARKET WIRE)--Aug 27, 2003 -- The University of Texas at Austin and IBM Research, based on support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), will collaborate to produce an adaptive, high-performance microprocessor that could revolutionize computing. The university team has conceived a new architecture, called TRIPS (Tera-op Reliable Intelligently-adaptive Processing System), that is designed to provide supercomputer performance on a single chip. Researchers at IBM's Austin Research Lab are working closely with The University of Texas at Austin team to develop a number of the relevant technology innovations necessary to realize such systems, and engagements are underway to ultimately commercialize the results.

The TRIPS architecture is designed to provide supercomputer performance on a single chip, ultimately scaling to deliver more than one trillion operations per second by 2010. In addition, the system will offer unprecedented flexibility to work well with many different types of software applications including desktop, signal processing, graphics, server, and scientific applications. This flexibility may allow a single TRIPS chip to serve several different processor markets, instead of current approaches that use unique and specialized processors for each market.

The fundamental innovation in the TRIPS design is its "block-oriented execution." Instead of operating on only a few computations at a time, the TRIPS processor operates on large blocks of computations mapped to an array of execution units on the chip. This approach allows many more instructions to execute in parallel, thus offering higher performance. These computation arrays include support for "polymorphism," which adapts them to match the type of software application currently running on the hardware. The IBM Research team is focused on the optimization of commercial computing applications for this novel architecture. The IBM team is also exploring new circuit and chip-design methodology innovations to enable this class of highly-configurable future chips.

The team will work for 30 months to develop a prototype microprocessor and system containing up to four processor cores, each capable of executing 16 operations per clock cycle, and a uniquely partitioned cache structure designed to offer higher performance than traditional approaches. The chip will contain over 250 million transistors, and will operate at 500 MHz. The goal is to demonstrate the feasibility of a full-scale industrial development that could offer a 10 GHz chip capable of executing over a trillion instructions per second. The joint University of Texas at Austin / IBM Research team is consulting with IBM Microelectronics on initial chip-design considerations, and it is expected that IBM Microelectronics will be the physical-design and fabrication partner for the TRIPS chip.

This research collaboration is being facilitated by an IBM Shared University Research (SUR) Award of a Linux-based IBM eServer xSeries computing cluster, which will help provide the bandwidth and computational capabilities required to accurately simulate and verify the advanced TRIPS processor design. The Linux cluster also will enable researchers to model large server workloads running on a multi-chip TRIPS system, improving the understanding of system-level design requirements of diverse supercomputing environments. IBM's SUR program awards computing equipment to colleges, universities and institutions of higher education around the world to facilitate research projects in areas of mutual interest.

Construction of the TRIPS prototype system is supported by a total of $11.1 million in funding from DARPA. The University of Texas at Austin scientists expect to have TRIPS prototype chips and systems running in their laboratory by December 2005.

About IBM Research

IBM Research is the world's largest information technology research organization, with more than 3,000 scientists and engineers at eight labs in six countries. IBM has produced more research breakthroughs than any other company in the IT industry. For more information on IBM Research, visit www.research.ibm.com.

About the Department of Computer Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin

The graduate program of the Department of Computer Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin is ranked in the top 10 nationally by U.S. News & World Report.

Contact:
Contact: My Luu
Company: IBM
Voice: 914-945-2988

Contact: Barbra Rodriguez
Company: The University of Texas at Austin
Voice: 512-232-0675