University of Toronto to Acquire Canada's Most Powerful Supercomputer From IBM

TORONTO, ONTARIO, Aug 14 (MARKET WIRE) --
The University of Toronto's SciNet Consortium and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today
announced an agreement to build Canada's most powerful and
energy-efficient supercomputer.

The consortium, which includes the University of Toronto and associated
research hospitals, will enhance SciNet's competitive position in
globally important research projects. These include ground-breaking
research in aerospace, astrophysics, bioinformatics, chemical physics,
climate change prediction, medical imaging and the global ATLAS project,
which is investigating the forces that govern the universe.

Capable of performing 360 trillion calculations per second, the
supercomputer will pioneer an innovative hybrid design containing two
systems that can work together or independently, connected to a massive
five petabyte storage complex. Because it is a hybrid using IBM's highly
efficient iDataPlex system, as well as IBM's advanced POWER6
architecture, the machine is extremely flexible, capable of running a
wide range of software at a high level of performance.

As a premier academic research system, the machine is expected to be
among the top 20 fastest supercomputers in the world; 30 times faster
than the peak performance of Canada's current largest research system. It
also represents the second largest system ever built on a university
campus, and the largest supercomputer outside the United States.

"The University of Toronto has partnered with IBM to become one of the
world's premier computational research institutions - a collaboration
that will attract researchers from around the world," said Dr. Richard
Peltier, Scientific Director of SciNet and Director of the Centre for
Global Change Science.

As a physicist whose interests are focused on planetary physics and
climate change prediction, Dr. Peltier's work includes research on the
impacts of greenhouse gas-induced global warming, which will be greatly
enhanced by this system. The SciNet facility will be one of the world's
most advanced supercomputers for analyzing high-resolution global models
to predict future risks, such as the accelerating decrease in Artic sea
ice. An immediate project will be the construction of regional climate
change predictions for the Province of Ontario and Great Lakes watershed
region.

Another area of research for this system will be to explore the modern
scientific mystery of why matter has mass and what constitutes the mass
of the universe. Beginning in September, the Large Hadron Collider
project based in Geneva, the most powerful particle accelerator ever
built, will produce vast quantities of data, which scientists hope will
be begin to unlock these mysteries. SciNet's computing power and storage
capacity will be a significant contributor to the data analysis.

"SciNet will have one of the best facilities in the world that will allow
Canadian physicists to participate in the adventure of the Large Hadron
Collider," said Dr. Pierre Savard, a member of the Canadian group working
at CERN, Geneva. "This research may change our view of matter and the
universe."

This facility will involve the largest implementation of IBM's iDataPlex
system, which holds twice as many processors per unit as standard systems
and is entirely water cooled. More than 4,000 servers will be linked
together in this multi-platform solution, including one of the world's
largest POWER6 clusters and Intel x86-based clusters. This IBM
supercomputer will be one of the first systems to use Future Intel(R)
Nehalem processor families, being introduced in early 2009.

"A system this complex could only be designed by bringing together the
best minds from the University of Toronto and IBM," said Chris Pratt,
Strategic Initiatives Executive, IBM Canada. "This is a tremendous
example of public and private collaboration that will benefit the
Canadian research community for many years to come."

Funding has been provided by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation's
National Platforms Fund, in partnership with the Province of Ontario and
the University of Toronto.

Construction of this extremely energy efficient datacenter will begin
immediately at a facility just north of Toronto. Installation of the
system will begin in the fall with several milestones throughout the
winter. It is anticipated that both of the main computing systems will be
fully operational by summer 2009.

For more information about IBM, please visit www.ibm.com.

Contacts:
Media Contacts:
University of Toronto Media Relations
Christa Poole
(416) 978-6974
Email: christa.poole@utoronto.ca

IBM Canada Ltd.
Mike Boden
IBM Media Relations
(416) 478-7117
Email: mboden@ca.ibm.com
Website: www.ibm.com

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