Sun expands pay-as-you go supercomputing

Sun Microsystems has added several business partners to a plan to offer supercomputing centers that customers can pay to use according to how many processing power they consume, fleshing out the utility pricing scheme it announced in September. As expected, Sun added partnerships with Atos Origin, CGI and EDS that bring specific expertise in industries such as oil and gas, financial services, media and manufacturing.

The expanded service is called Sun Utility Computing for High-end Grid. Pricing is set by the partners, Sun spokesman Brett Smith said. The service is based on a foundation of Sun Fire V20z servers using Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron processor and either Linux or Sun's Solaris operating system.