The semiconductor industry landscape (PDF, 233KB) has been transformed by several forces. The traditional model alone (smaller, faster, cheaper — every two years) no longer ensures success. To sustain competitive advantage, semiconductor companies must optimize their end-to-end capabilities to drive innovation in technology as well as their business model.
Collaborating with the right partners can help companies handle the intense pressure — from clients, competitors and the market — to innovate, develop products faster and get them to market sooner, while ensuring the highest return on investment.
Meeting the product development challenges of this industry means carefully selecting and implementing the best development process, electronic design automation (EDA) tools, product life-cycle management tools and IT infrastructure.
These choices directly affect an organization’s product development goals for time-to-market improvements, schedule predictability, quality, team productivity and IT resource management. IBM has been in the forefront of chip designs for many decades and continues to innovate in this area. IBM understands the infrastructure needs of demanding EDA workloads.
Compute-intensive, electronic design automation workloads demand an IT infrastructure that offers performance, reliability, flexibility and scalability. IBM Systems server and storage solutions are specifically designed to address these requirements and are open, energy efficient and optimized to run your EDA workloads. IBM also has partnerships with all leading independent software vendors (ISVs) for EDA to ensure that their solutions are optimized on our platforms.
In addition, IBM® Systems Director and IBM Tivoli® solutions offer end-to-end IT resource management capabilities, and IBM Rational® software offerings complement EDA ISV offerings by providing a complete software life-cycle management platform. We also offer custom semiconductor design and semiconductor production solutions.
IBM understands the challenges of this market. We’re ready to help.
IBM System x iDataPlex
The IBM System x™ iDataPlex™ solution, targeted to x86 servers for Windows® and Linux®, revolutionizes data center economics by packing double the number of servers into a single rack, using as much as 40 percent less energy for heating and cooling, and providing simplified systems management in a flexible, modular design. This can help increase the computing performance of your entire data center.
IBM System x rack mounted servers
Two-socket servers
IBM System x3450 delivers maximum performance for minimal investment with large memory addressability and 1600 MHz front-side bus.
IBM System x3455 provides outstanding performance in a 1U package for compute-intensive environments at an affordable price.
Four-socket servers
IBM System x3755 provides maximum memory availability in a 4U package for applications.
IBM System x3950 is a highly scalable system with extreme reliability that takes performance to the next level.
IBM BladeCenter systems
IBM BladeCenter® systems integrate servers, storage and networking, offering up to 31 percent greater density, a wide selection of processor technologies, improved power and cooling, and simplified management to help reduce data center complexity without sacrificing superior performance.
The IBM BladeCenter workstation ushers in revolutionary, server-based computing technology that offers high security and manageability, while delivering outstanding graphics performance.
IBM BladeCenter blade servers support a wide selection of processor technologies and operating systems to allow clients to run all their diverse workloads within a single architecture. It also helps reduce complexity, improve systems management and increase energy efficiency while driving down total cost of ownership.
Cluster systems
IBM System Cluster 1350™ offers an integrated, factory-built and factory-tested cluster solution with comprehensive warranty service for all cluster components, including third-party options. This highly acclaimed solution reduces installation and deployment time, while providing exceptional scalability and performance at a competitive price.
Cell/B.E. technology solutions for EDA
Mentor Graphics and IBM have partnered with Mercury Computer Systems to offer standard coprocessor acceleration (CPA) clusters based on the ultra-high-performance Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.) processor designed for the computational lithography workload in the EDA market.
IBM Computing on Demand
IBM Computing on Demand (CoD) is the industry-leading enterprise solution for cloud computing. It provides flexible computing power — by the hour, week or year — as well as global access to CoD centers and security you can depend on. By off-loading transactions to CoD, you can scale your infrastructure without further capital investments, helping to reduce costs and improve competitive advantage.
IBM System Storage
IBM network-attached storage (NAS) products provide a wide variety of network attachment capabilities to a broad range of host and client systems.
IBM System Storage™ disk systems provide compelling storage solutions with superior value for all levels of business.
IBM System Storage DCS9550 Storage System offers a scalable storage solution for high-performance computing.
Software
IBM General Parallel File System™ (GPFS™) is a high-performance, scalable file management solution that provides fast, reliable access to a common set of file data from a single computer to hundreds of systems. GPFS brings together mixed server and storage components to provide a common view to enterprise file data. It provides online storage management, scalable access and integrated information life-cycle tools capable of managing petabytes of data and billions of files.
Scale out file services (SOFS) are designed to eliminate your information sharing challenges through swift implementation of a highly scalable, global, clustered NAS system.
IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller helps simplify your IT storage infrastructure.
IBM HPC Open Software Stack is designed to make “clusters” — servers linked together to form a single super-fast system — more productive and easier to manage.
IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler LoadLeveler® is a parallel job scheduling system that allows users to run more jobs in less time by matching each job's processing needs and priority with the available resources, thereby maximizing resource utilization. The LoadLeveler product also provides a single point of control for effective workload management. It offers detailed accounting of system utilization for tracking or chargeback and supports high-availability configurations.
IBM Rational software helps organizations automate, integrate and govern the process of software and systems delivery.
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