TD Bank Financial Group Partners With IBM on Breakthrough Supercomputing System

Real-Time Market Analysis and Event Modeling Available for the First Time



NEW YORK, NY .- Today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced a partnership with TD Bank Financial Group to explore the use of IBM’s breakthrough “Stream Computing” software system which will utilize the IBM Blue Gene supercomputer. Together, they will explore a fundamentally new software architecture that examines thousands of real-time information sources to support financial services companies as they capitalize on up-to-the-minute changing market conditions.

“Today’s hardware and software is not optimized for real-time analysis of data. They came from a paradigm that paused and then queried a database of past information to give an answer while new information was still coming in that may affect the outcome,” said Nagui Halim, chief scientist of the Stream Computing project in IBM Research. “We’ve designed and constructed a computing system from the ground up to provide continual analytics as events happen, which has very powerful applications in financial services, government, and many other scientific and business areas.”

Traditional computing paradigms are challenged by large volumes of data, increasing operational complexity, and real-time business demands. IBM’s system uses a unique stream computing architecture with advanced mathematical algorithms that perform on-the-fly analysis of live data from any source, reducing the work required by downstream systems or people. This approach provides a framework for continuously refining analysis and easily including new data sources as they become available.

“The combination of the Stream Computing architecture and the Blue Gene supercomputer allows enhancements to our real-time messaging and analytical capabilities while simplifying the underlying infrastructure. This taps into IT innovation that can benefit our businesses,” said Rizwan Khalfan, CIO TD Wholesale Banking.

The world’s most powerful line of supercomputers -- IBM’s Blue Gene family -- is by far the most energy-efficient, according to a new ranking of the TOP500 computers. In 2007, the inaugural Green500 list (www.green500.org) ranked by energy efficiency the machines that make the overall TOP500 list of the world’s fastest computers. The new Green500 list shows IBM Blue Gene supercomputers capturing the top 26 spots.

A unique feature of the IBM Stream Computing system is the ability to instantly analyze structured and unstructured data, and provide insights that allow decisions to be made instantly. IBM has demonstrated the Stream Computing system’s capability to instantly integrate text, voice, images, video, databases, market data feeds and application data, then automatically determine which information is relevant to gain a competitive advantage in a constantly changing market.

IBM research is currently expanding its research to include performance improvements in current pilots, exploring new domains of use and integrating the latest hardware advances such as the Cell processor, optical networking, as well as the IBM Blue Gene supercomputer.