IBM boosts IT innovation in New Zealand universities
IBM New Zealand managing director Katrina Troughton has affirmed the company’s support for Universities under the Partnerships for Excellence programme following government confirmation of funding for it in the Budget. IBM is also the largest sponsor of the New Zealand ICT Innovation Institute at the University of Canterbury...
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The company is already working with the University of Canterbury to provide financial and support in kind for the establishment of the IBM High Performance Computing facility under the Partnerships for Excellence programme. This facility will utilise the latest IBM POWER5 technology and provide raw performance of 1 Teraflops (One billion Floating Point Operations per Second) in its initial configuration. This equates to performance roughly 500 times that of a standard PC. While the system is already one of the more powerful of its kind in New Zealand it is capable of growing in performance to over 60 Teraflops through the addition of further processors and memory. This would place the system in the top ten most powerful computers in the world. IBM is also working with the University of Auckland and other universities under the Partnerships for Excellence and other programmes. “The link between government, universities and the private sector is a vital one in bringing innovation and growth to New Zealand’s economy,” says Troughton. Troughton says such programmes and their funding are an investment in New Zealand’s future.
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June 2006
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