IBM withdraws from Blue Waters supercomputer project

Chronicle : In a surprise move, IBM abruptly ended its contract with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to provide hardware for building the world’s fastest academic supercomputer. Started in 2007, Blue Waters became more complex and expensive than originally planned, according to officials at IBM. Nevertheless, university officials think they can still finish the computer on time, even without IBM’s unique and innovative Power7 series chips. The university has been given a few weeks to submit an alternate proposal to NSF, which has provided most of the project’s funding.