IDA Launches New Initiatives At imbX

18 June 2008

Excerpt from The Straits Times

Souped-Up Computing For Rent

Businesses in the infocomm sector got a leg up with several initiatives announced by the Government yesterday. These are some of the highlights:

COMPANIES such as animation producers, financial houses and even educational institutions can soon enjoy more computing capability without needing to own the hardware.

SHOW ME THE GOODS: Staff at Samsung's CommunicAsia booth show trade visitors the Omnia, a mobile phone that rivals the iPhone. Now products and programmes were unveiled at the event.

They can 'rent' higher computing capability, which is based on a method known as grid computing, from three service providers in the fourth quarter of this year.

Grid computing is the practice of coupling many computer 'brains', so that together, they have a souped-up ability to perform tasks involving a lot of data. This speeds up calculations and the results can be delivered in days, instead of months or years.

The project, called Grid Market Hub, will ride on the ultra- high-speed broadband connectivity which will be rolled out soon, said Information, Communications and the Arts Minister Lee Boon Yang, at the opening of the Infocomm Media Business Exchange yesterday.

Users will be able to tap the computing power of over 2,500 computing chips, or cores, to begin with. This will build up to 3,500 cores by 2011. Costs start at $0.33 per core hour.

An Infocomm Development Authority spokesman said that 40 per cent of the demand for grid resources will come from the public sector.
The grid service providers are consortiums led by New Media Express, PTC System and Singapore Computer Systems.

Copyright © 2008 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. Co.