New York’s Stony Brook isn’t what you think of when you consider competiting forces in the cloud provider space but this week it was announced that two financial services firms are renting out space on their supercomputers to drive forth hedge fund research projects aimed at designing trading strategies. The plan might utilize cycles on New York Blue, a massively parallel IBM Blue Gene machine that is owned by Stony Brook. This creates what Stony Brook is calling a “cloud” and others are expected to jump on. As it stands, the university provides free use when running test code and hypothetical data, but payment is required for commercial projects which is calculated according to the utility bill and a small additional charge. New York Blue can also be used without cost if there is an agreement to share intellectual property derived from the research.
Universities Put “Blue Gene” Machines In Cloud, To Help Hedge Funds Trade
June 9, 2010