In October, IBM announces the eServer p690 ("Regatta") as the world's most
powerful UNIX server, crowning a five-year effort to deliver a new class of UNIX
system that incorporates microprocessor breakthroughs and mainframe technologies.
When tackling the most complex problems, multiple p690 servers can be linked
together to create supercomputers powered by more than 1,000 processors.
Later in the month, IBM reports that "Regatta" sets a world record for processing
speed on the important Fluent engineering benchmark. The company begins shipping
"Regatta" in volume in December.
IBM announces the general availability of the ThinkPad TransNote, the world's
first portfolio notebook combining a mobile computer with a digital notepad and
featuring one of the industry's most radical design changes since the clamshell.
IBM is selected by a consortium of four U.S. research centers in August to build
the world's most powerful computing Grid, an interconnected series of Linux
clusters capable of processing 13.6 trillion calculations per second. The Grid
system -- known as the Distributed Terascale Facility -- will enable thousands of
scientists around the United States to share computing resources over the world's
fastest research network in search of breakthroughs in life sciences, climate
modeling and other critical disciplines. That same month, IBM is selected to
partner with several centers in the U.K. National Grid to link a massive network
of computers throughout the United Kingdom, leveraging the company's expertise in
scalable servers and storage, open standards, self-managing technologies, services
and e-business software.
The Personal Systems Group says it will use "self healing" technology in an online
customer service infrastructure to diagnose and resolve common information
technology (IT) problems. As part of the company's Project eLiza -- a
multi-billion dollar program to develop self-managing systems that reduce the cost
and complexity of the IT infrastructure -- IBM delivers the industry's first
services to automate key e-business processes that predict, identify and intercept
problems on a real-time basis.
The company unveils the T220, the world's highest resolution flat panel monitor,
with a 22.2-inch screen that shows 12-times more detail than current monitors.
IBM scientists develop a breakthrough transistor technology that could lead to the
production of a new class of smaller, faster and lower power computer chips than
are now possible with silicon. They build the world's first array of transistors
out of carbon nanotubes -- tiny cylinders of carbon atoms that measure as small as
10 atoms across and are 500 times smaller than today's silicon-based transistors.
The U.S. Government dedicates ASCI White, the world's fastest supercomputer at the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. ASCI White, an IBM system,
covers a space the size of two basketball courts and weighs 106 tons. It contains
six trillion bytes (TB) of memory, almost 50,000 times greater than the average
personal computer, and has more than 160 TB of IBM TotalStorage 7133 Serial Disk
System capacity -- enough to hold six Library of Congress book collections.
