IBM announced on Tuesday the IBM iDataPlex Dx360 M3, the company's first high performance computing (HPC) system that combines Intel and Nvidia processors. In a supercomputer the GPU handles highly specialized computation-intensive tasks, where a GPU can be more suitable than a CPU.

The IBM iDataPlex Dx360 M3 is powered by both Intel Xeon central processing units and NVIDIA Tesla 20-series GPUs and is designed to be clustered with other Dx360 M3 modular servers to form a supercomputer. Each GPU requires around 200 watts of power and a 16-lane PCI-e connection.

"IBM?s adoption of Tesla for their HPC server line is the most significant milestone in Tesla history," said Andy Keane, general manager, Tesla business at NVIDIA. "Scientists worldwide can now access the power of Tesla and CUDA from the world leader in technical computing."

Designed for data centers that require high performance, yet are constrained on floor space, power and cooling infrastructure, the IBM System x iDataPlex dx360 M3 provides a half-depth solution optimized for maximum density and efficiency. Featuring the latest Intel Xeon Processor 5600 series and DDR-3 memory, the dx360 M3 is easy to manage and delivers high performance in a flexible platform that can be tailored to a data center?s processing, storage or I/O needs.

For high performance computing, the dx360 M3 allows to pack accelerated processing into the same power and cooling envelope as traditional servers, better utilizing floor space and optimizing the data center.

Pricing was not disclosed. For more information on the mew supercomputer, visit http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/x/hardware/idataplex/dx360m3/index.html