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Dallas, Texas — Computer Sciences Corp, the world No. 3 player in computer outsourcing and services, on Monday said it would open pay-per-use access to its banks of super-fast supercomputers over the Internet. CSC said the new service would allow supercomputing power on demand to companies that can’t afford their own expensive high-performance machines, which typically operate at speeds about 10,000 times faster than a desktop computer.
The El Segundo-based company said the new service would offer access through a Web portal to its existing High Performance Computing (HPC). Called e-HPC.com, the service is open to a wide range of software types that a customer might be using.
“I think we are the first to do this on a professional basis,” said John Rawlins, director of Supercomputing Operations within CSC’s Global Infrastructure Services (GIS) division.
Rawlins said there were a handful of universities in the United States and Europe that share supercomputers with outside companies.
CSC’s service is aimed at long-term contracts as well as project-by-project deals with companies and other organizations that need high-powered computing to process huge amounts of data.
Rawlins said typical users might be companies in biotechnology, engineering, seismic exploration and mapping or molecular science.
“Many organizations need regular access to HPC facilities or occasional access to specialist systems in periods of peak demand. The Internet now gives us the ideal route for users to access our powerful resources,” he said.
The computing technology will be refreshed and capabilities grown progressively to keep the best supercomputing technologies available to clients, CSC said.
CSC, which had sales of $9.4 billion in fiscal 2000 that ended March 31, is in the business of outsourcing computer systems for companies and governments as well as consulting on computer services. Its larger competitors are Electronic Data Systems Corp and International Business Machines Corp.
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