IBM Optimistic About Global IT Buildout

By Michael Feldman

January 25, 2008

Last week, IBM announced strong fourth quarter earnings results and expressed a good start and positive outlook for 2008. The company reported that in Q4 it collected $28.9 billion in revenue, representing a 10 percent increase compared to Q4 of last year. For the year, that brought the revenue total to $98.8 billion, up eight percent over 2006. At a time when economists are increasingly worried about the prospects of a U.S. recession, that’s good news indeed. The IBM Q4 report even managed to rally the troubled U.S. stock market for a day.

Looking at the x86 server segment, IBM reported that System x revenue grew at a comfortable six percent year over year, but blades surged ahead with 31 percent growth. The company noted that x86 quad-core equipped System x servers sold out in the fourth quarter, presumably because AMD’s Barcelona chips were MIA, leaving only Xeon quad-core systems available for customers.

Behind those cheery numbers is the fact that IBM’s Q4 growth was only a moderate five percent in the U.S., with the weakening dollar acting as an incentive for foreign sales. The low value of the dollar also helped to prop up earnings totals, since all the revenue from foreign currencies is converted into greenbacks for the bottom line. IBM said that 65 percent of Q4 revenue came from outside the United States, a number which is virtually identical to the 67 percent HP reported for its non-U.S. revenue slice in its Fiscal Year Q4.

Perhaps more importantly, the fastest growing economies, such as India, China and Russia, made up 22 percent of IBM’s revenue base, and these countries collectively grew more than 20 percent in the quarter. The red hot economies of the BRIC nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China — are now being joined by other emerging economies, like South Africa, Poland and Malaysia, which are also taking advantage of local tech talent and a rapidly developing middle class. All of these countries are quickly building up IT capabilities, and often without the obstacle of having to deal with a legacy infrastructure.

“In some ways the buildout of infrastructure is much like the construction of the railroads and telegraph lines that helped open new markets during the California Gold Rush, said Mark Loughridge, IBM’s senior vice president and chief financial officer. “In the past, IBM helped build the business and IT infrastructure for much of the developed world. Today, in what has become the Gold Rush of the 21st century, we see a new era of growth for IBM in these emerging markets.”

IBM’s optimistic outlook for 2008 is based on the continued robustness of developing economies and the company’s intent to keep investing in them. Western Europe, while overall not expected to grow as quickly as emerging economies, will likely outpace the U.S. in 2008. This past week IBM teamed with Intel and Cisco to announce the expansion of its HPC facility in Montpellier, France. The new facility will contain state-of-the-art IBM cluster setups for would-be European customers to benchmark and test their HPC applications. Like other globalized IT firms, IBM is counting on foreign revenue to take up some of the slack of anticipated weaker growth in the U.S this year. That should work out as long as the U.S. doesn’t head into a severe recession that would pull the global economy down with it.

The HPC market seem to be reflecting the overall trend in a global IT build out. Although neither IBM nor any other firm releases public data that ties HPC revenue to geographic regions, analysts are predicting an increasingly globalized HPC community. In 2006, an IDC report titled “Worldwide Technical Server 2006-2010 Forecast by Geographic Region” projected that North American HPC server revenue would grow from $4.571 billion in 2005 to $6.649 billion in 2010; the corresponding figures for the rest of the world are $4.627 billion in 2005 and $7.566 billion in 2010.

Other anecdotal evidence points to an expanding international HPC presence. For example, the November 2007 edition of the TOP500 list showed three of the top five systems belonging to nations other than the United States, specifically, an IBM Blue Gene/P system in Germany at number two, an HP Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c in India at number four, and another HP Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c in Sweden at number five. Beyond the elite systems, a number of significant systems have been announced around the world over the last few months, including:

  • the Cray XT4 HECToR system at the University of Edinburgh, UK (deployed).
  • an SGI Altix system for the China National Satellite Meteorological Center (deployed).
  • a couple of Bull NovaScale supercomputers for the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco and Universidade Federal do Ceara in Brazil (presumably deployed).
  • a 14-teraflop IBM Blue Gene/P system for the Meraka Institute in South Africa.
  • a Cray XT4 system at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
  • an Appro Xtreme-X supercomputer for Japan’s Center for Computational Sciences at the University of Tsukuba.
  • a Cray XT5 system for the Danish Meteorological Institute.
  • a NEC SX-9 for Japan’s Tohoku University.
  • a couple of IBM POWER6 clusters for the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in the UK.
  • the most recent announcement of the IBM Blue Gene/P system for Moscow State University, Russia’s first Blue Gene.

The Russian Blue Gene system points to IBM’s enthusiasm for HPC sales opportunities in the BRIC countries. According to Dave Turek, the company’s VP of Deep Computing, their expectations are that sales will grow proportionately to the extent that those countries make broader commitments to the sectors of the economy that typically drive HPC demand. IBM sees China, in particular, as a country where industrial growth is opening up a broad range opportunities for HPC. But the company expects that pattern to be reflected among other BRIC nations as well.

“In China, for example, we see the emergence of industrial sectors around automotive and aerospace; and petroleum exploration in Russia and South America,” said Turek. “This is all a stimulus to HPC sales. And the opening up of financial sectors is also a broad demand driver for HPC. I think that HPC demand in the BRIC countries will be led by the commitment and general buildout to support these types of industries.”

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

Nvidia Appoints Andy Grant as EMEA Director of Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI

March 22, 2024

Nvidia recently appointed Andy Grant as Director, Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). With over 25 years of high-performance computing (HPC) experience, Grant brings a Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire