IBM has won a contract to help build a "grid" of distributed computers in North Carolina. The North Carolina Genomics and Bioinformatics Consortium, a group of pharmaceutical companies and universities, is building a collection of computers called the North Carolina Bioinformatics Grid that will be shared by its users.
IBM will contribute staff, hardware and software for the project, including a top-end p690 Unix server and its "Shark" storage system, the company said. IBM, Sun Microsystems and others are warming to the grid concept.