IBM Supercomputer to Aid Crash Tests

Volvo has chosen IBM to help it meet its self-imposed mission to make the world's safest automobiles. An IBM supercomputer will power crash test simulations and day-to-day production tasks that will be used to fine tune vehicle designs through Volvo's "design-for-safety" engineering approach.

The system is composed of more than 150 IBM eServer 325s equipped with AMD Opteron processors. IBM technicians have combined the new hardware with Volvo's existing eServer xSeries 335 and eServer pSeries 655 HPC (High Performance Computing) platform to produce one of the world's fastest Linux clusters when compared across the Top500.org rankings.

IBM has displaced competitor CGI as Volvo's primary HPC vendor. In a statement to BetaNews, IBM's vice president of Deep Computing, David Turek, lauded today's announcement as a sign of IBM's "dominance in the super computing world."

"Prior to IBM, Volvo was running an SGI supercomputer that allowed the automaker to run tests and gather results overnight. With the newly installed IBM system, Volvo can run tests/simulations and gather results at least twice a day," said Turek.

In 2002 Volvo purchased a HPC Linux cluster from Big Blue, an automotive industry first.

"The power and precision of our systems, coupled with our deep automotive industry expertise, makes us a perfect choice for the Volvo Car Corporation as it further continues to position itself as a world-wide leader in safety, meet customer demand, adjust to market forces and continue growth," added Turek.