DETROIT (AP) General Motors Corp. has bought a supercomputer from IBM that the companies say is the fastest in the automotive industry and will more than halve the time it takes to get a vehicle on the market.
The new supercomputer, based on IBM's Power 4 and Power 5 technology, more than doubles the computing capacity of the world's largest automaker, and is expected to slash the amount of time it takes to get a vehicle to market from 48 months to 18 months.
GM said in a release that the computer is the fastest in the industry, “by a wide margin,'' and can compute at a rate of nine teraflops, or nine trillion calculations per second.
Neither GM nor IBM would reveal how much the computer cost.
The technology is expected to allow design modifications and engineering questions in GM vehicles to be handled in a matter of hours when they previously would have taken months to resolve.
GM received the first phase of the supercomputer network in March and will receive a second phase later this year, spokesman Chris Perry said.
The supercomputer also is expected to continue cutting GM's crash test costs by advancing digital simulations. Since GM began using the system, it has cut the number of needed crash vehicles, which cost $500,000 per test, by about 85 percent.
Posted by 35TH ED/ed (Member # 1709) on :
Saw a little on the news last night about the purchase. Was amazing what they can do, down to 14 months to bring a vehicle out for production .
And to just think ALL the Love that GM has 10 months for a New Camaro to come out
[ 22. April 2004, 12:34 PM: Message edited by: 35TH ED/ed ]
Posted by poSSum (Member # 119) on :
quote:Originally posted by 35TH ED/ed: Was amazing what they can do, down to 14 months to bring a vehicle out for production .
Hate to be the pessimist but I'll believe it when I see it ....I think they'll have to replace decision makers with computers first. Posted by vyto2 (Member # 2265) on :
Shoulda bought a mac... Posted by Thom Mackesy (Member # 264) on :
It better be using EMC storage.....
Posted by Fbodfather (Member # 1119) on :
well...don't expect cars to come out in 14 months....the point is that it can reduce engineering time down to 14 months..and I think that's kinda optimistic...
Nevertheless....THANKS IBM!!!!
Posted by MM (Member # 1247) on :
Hmm I bet that cost a little more then this old dog of my personal computer... heck a pentium celeron overclocked was the machine to have....7 years ago! Posted by T TOPSS (Member # 1674) on :
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