IBM Supercomputer Used for Crash Simulations and Virtual Product Development at Volvo

April 6, 2005

Today, IBM announced that it has been selected by Volvo Car Corporation to build a powerful supercomputer to perform critical automobile crash simulations. IBM will provide both hardware and services to help increase the "design-for-safety" approach.

The new system includes more than 150 IBM eServer 325s with AMD Opteron Processors. When combined with Volvo's existing eServer xSeries 335 and eServer pSeries 655 HPC (High Performance Computing) platform, it is expected to become one of the automotive industry's fastest Linux clusters (based on Top500.org) and will serve as the backbone to the mission-critical automobile production to determine vehicle simulation testing efforts. This new infrastructure allows engineers to collaborate on a worldwide platform to maintain their high-safety standards.

"We are very excited to be working with Volvo Cars and see this as a great milestone in our mission to deepen our relationships in the automotive industry," said David Turek, vice president, Deep Computing, IBM. "The power and precision of our systems, coupled with our deep automotive industry expertise, makes us a perfect choice for the Volvo Car Corporation as it further continues to position itself as a world-wide leader in safety, meet customer demand, adjust to market forces and continue growth."

In 2002, Volvo Cars announced the first Linux cluster from IBM in the automotive industry. The new HPC environment assisted Volvo in advancing automotive design and innovation -- bringing the company to the forefront of the industry.