Believing that the technological underpinnings of the Archipelago Exchange allow it to be customized to trade nearly anything, Sun Microsystems Inc. and Archipelago Holdings Inc. have announced that they will develop a platform that allows companies to dynamically bid for open compute cycles.
The CPU usage cycle exchange is intended to provide companies worldwide with flexibility in planning for the purchase and use of compute power. In theory, subscribing firms can access an unlimited number of CPUs as they need them.
The exchange will be based on the new Sun Grid and Archipelagos electronic matching technology, currently utilized to match up buyers and sellers of shares of company stock.
/zimages/6/28571.gifClick hereto read more about Suns new grid.
ArcaEx, Archipelagos electronic communications network, trades NASDAQ-listed equity securities and exchange-listed equity securities, including those traded on the New York Stock Exchange, American Stock Exchange and Pacific Exchange. ArcaEx offers corporate issuers and investors the ability to meet directly, without intermediaries, within an electronic and totally transparent environment.
“As the demand for computing power increases, we see great potential in building an exchange for trading CPU usage cycles,” said Steve Rubinow, chief technology officer of the Archipelago Exchange. “Were excited about partnering with Sun and developing this opportunity.”
The compute exchange announcement comes on the back of Suns new utility offerings, which include the Sun Grid compute utility, a $1-per-CPU-per-hour pay-per-use offering, and the Sun Grid storage utility, a $1-per-gigabyte-per-month offering. Sun has said that it will roll out additional Sun Grid offerings for the desktop and developer communities in the next few months.
Archipelago had been a Microsoft/Intel house prior to its purchase of GlobeNet in 2002. After analyzing GlobeNets systems, built on Sun technology, Archipelago felt that the scalability of what Sun had to offer gave it a better way to expand in the future.
ArcaEx is designed to accept and book 5,000 orders per second, handle up to 500 simultaneous connections and deal with up to 10 million trades per day. The designers of the CPU cycle exchange expect it to provide similar benefits to facilities planners.
A date has not yet been announced for the rollout of the CPU cycle exchange.
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