The chip maker says it will build at least two semiconductor fabrication plants, or fabs, on the 1,000-acre site, where Intel will research, develop, and manufacture its most cutting-edge computer chips, employing at least 3,000 people. Construction will begin this year and the plant should be operational by 2025, the company said.
Gore-Randall of Lazard similarly worries that many REC buyers could be caught off guard. "I wouldn't be surprised if regulatory bodies step up and debate the topic of additionality," he says. "Then, suddenly, if the rules change, companies that use unbundled RECs to measure scope 2 emissions could end up being very exposed."
IBM says Its Co-location Plan Isn’t A Cost-saving Measure
The question isn't rhetorical, and it hints at a measurement of supercomputing that's far more relevant to businesses than raw performance: Time to insight. That's the time it takes to understand a problem, plan a solution, write the software, and run the job.
IBM is trying to simplify the search. Blue Gene was conceived of as a computer to simulate protein-folding, a mysterious bodily process that could shed light on disease formation if it's well understood. That work is still under way-a small version of Blue Gene/L can run one protein simulation 12 times faster than IBM's popular SP supercomputers, Pulleyblank says. This summer, the company plans to start testing a broader palette of software with business appeal: Seismic imaging apps that help oil companies find petroleum reserves, computational chemistry software for biotech, and business-intelligence software for analyzing sales data. IBM this summer also plans to bring a Blue Gene/L machine online at its computing center in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., making time available to select customers over the Internet. Yet another pilot involves testing derivatives-pricing software with an unnamed bank. "IBM's a big company. They don't make a living on things you just sell to universities," says Phil Andrews, director of high-end computing at the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
Since Japan's Earth Simulator supercomputer shocked Washington two years ago, there's been a sense that the United States could lose its lead in other scientific disciplines, just as it did in climate science. The National Science Foundation last month reported that U.S. dominance in critical scientific fields is slipping, as measured in the number of patents awarded and papers published. The percentage of American Nobel Prize winners has fallen during the 2000s amid competition from Europe and Japan. And fewer American students are training to become scientists and engineers. Meanwhile, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea have seen rapid growth in the number of patents awarded over the past 20 years. Europe is poised to take the lead in particle physics, with the world's largest supercollider in Switzerland scheduled to open in 2007. Spain is planning to build the second-most-powerful computer for general scientific use.
Boeing director Budworth, who's active in the project, says the Dreamliner will be Boeing's first airplane whose assembly will be modeled more or less end to end on a supercomputer. Software that can plot the location of every part and tool and on the factory floor is becoming so sophisticated that a petaflop computer may soon be necessary to run it.
Experience curve effects says that each doubling of the cumulative production of virtually any product or service is accompanied by an approximate constant percentage reduction in the unit cost. The acknowledged first documented qualitative description of this dates from 1885.[177][178] A power curve was used to describe this phenomenon in a 1936 discussion of the cost of airplanes.[179]
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