INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, San Francisco, Sept. 27, 2006 — IBM and Intel Corporation, with support from dozens of other companies, have developed a proposal to enhance PCI Express* technology to address the performance requirements of new usage models, such as visualization and extensible markup language (XML).

The proposal, codenamed ‘Geneseo,’ outlines enhancements that will enable faster connectivity between the processor — the computer’s brain — and application accelerators, and improve the range of design options for hardware developers. Applications that will benefit include visualization, such as complex weather modeling; math and physics, such as data intensive financial applications; and content processing, such as the encryption and decryption of communications infrastructure data.

‘IBM is co-founding a new open standard for attaching accelerators and co-processors to server platforms,’ said Dr. Tom Bradicich, IBM fellow and chief technology officer, System x™ and BladeCenter® Servers. ‘Like PCI-X, InfiniBand and PCI Express, this new architecture defines a standards-based approach for improving general purpose server accessibility within new and emerging application areas, such as encryption, visualization, XML and complex mathematical modeling.’