In a data center at Purdue University, a rare supercomputer is crunching numbers for researchers studying a broad range of scientific problems. The 5,832-processor machine is capable of performing 8 trillion calculations per second, yet consumes just a fraction of the electricity needed by Purdue's other supercomputers.
The machine is one of a kind at Purdue -- because the company that built it doesn't exist anymore. It comes from the recently folded SiCortex, a start-up founded with the idea of building the world's most efficient computers.
SiCortex's story illustrates the difficulty of trying to build a new systems company in a maturing industry. Even if the idea is innovative, the product solves real-world problems and the company attracts an experienced management team and venture backing, success is far from guaranteed.
"It's always difficult to build this type of company," says Jud Leonard, SiCortex co-founder and chief architect. "You're up against a very well established, strongly entrenched business and you know, Intel is a fierce competitor. We never imagined it was going to be an easy job."
IT industry graveyard 2009
Purdue CIO Gerry McCartney says SiCortex helped him address one of his nagging challenges -- providing compute cycles to researchers without overwhelming his power and cooling systems. McCartney was hoping to buy one or two more SiCortex clusters and put them together to build one giant scientific research machine, but he'll never get the chance.
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relevANTS - der neue Nachrichtendienst
