KAUST's IBM Supercomputer is Middle East's Fastest and Most Powerful System

Shaheen System to enable scientific, economic and social advances through
development and application of high performance computing solutions

JEDDAH, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, June 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- King
Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and IBM (NYSE: IBM)
today announced that the high-performance computing (HPC) system, named
Shaheen, has placed 14 among the world's most powerful supercomputers,
according to the latest TOP500 List of Supercomputers.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090416/IBMLOGO )

The foundation of a joint research project launched by KAUST and IBM, Shaheen
was developed to serve the University's scientific researchers across dozens
of disciplines, advance new innovations in computational sciences, and
contribute to the further development of a knowledge-based economy in Saudi
Arabia.

Shaheen is a 16-rack Blue Gene/P System, which performed at a peak processing
power of 185 Teraflops -- or 185 trillion floating point operations -- per
second and is located at the KAUST campus in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. Shaheen
also is designed to be one of the most energy-efficient supercomputers
globally, which is consistent with KAUST's high environmental standards.

"Shaheen is the cornerstone of the knowledge-based economy that Saudi Arabia
is seeking to develop," said Majid Al-Ghaslan, KAUST's interim Chief
Information Officer. "The deep computing capabilities Shaheen can deliver
will unite the best of business and scientific computing techniques and will
enable us to find the value buried in growing volumes of data and apply that
information to solve real-world problems. Through our collaboration with IBM,
we are finding it possible to tackle problems of unbelievable complexity --
things we couldn't dream of doing even a few years ago."

The research project Shaheen is powering -- known as the KAUST/IBM Center for
Deep Computing Research -- will deliver both high-performance computing
capabilities to the a wide range of academic disciplines at KAUST, as well as
enable advanced research and innovation in the computational sciences and HPC
field.

Shaheen's performance and computing capabilities include:

-- 65,536 independent processing cores.
-- A next generation data center that is able to scale to exascale
computing requirements
-- 10 Gbps access to world's academic and research networks.

Additional information about KAUST Research is available at:
http://www.kaust.edu.sa

CONTACT:
Chris Andrews
914-945-1195
candrews@us.ibm.com

SOURCE IBM

Chris Andrews, +1-914-945-1195, candrews@us.ibm.com