February 7, 2005

Archipelago Holdings and Sun Microsystems just announced the two companies plan to design the world's first Internet shared-computer exchange.

Based on the new Sun Grid and Archipelago's electronic matching technology, the companies plan to introduce a new electronic trading environment that will allow customers to bid on CPU usage cycles. Being able to dynamically bid for open compute cycles will provide companies across the globe with unprecedented flexibility in planning for the purchase and use of compute power. This is a new paradigm in computing where companies can access an unlimited number of CPUs as they need them.

The compute exchange announcement comes on the back of Sun's new utility offerings, which include the Sun Grid compute utility, a $1 (USD) per CPU per hour pay-per-use offering ($1/cpu-hr), and the Sun Grid storage utility, a $1 (USD) per gigabyte per month offering ($1/GB-mo). In the coming months, Sun will also roll out additional Sun Grid offerings for the desktop and developer communities.

Sun and The Archipelago Exchange to Partner in World's First Online Compute Exchange.

Source: Line 56