WebProNews

Google and IBM have partnered to give some of the world’s best young minds access to hundreds of linked computers.  What’s more, the companies aren’t doing this out of direct self-interest, and have teamed up with six universities.

Google, IBM Create University "Cloud"

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of Maryland, Stanford University, the University of Washington, and the University of California at Berkeley - these are the six schools.  They’re also, in case you didn’t guess, where those “best young minds” can be found.

As for the hundreds of computers - they’ll essentially come from Google’s and IBM’s pockets.  The International Herald Tribune reports that the two companies have agreed to spend $30 million over the next two years, and Google itself stated that they intend to gather around 1,600 processors.

The aim of the whole initiative, then, is to “address the challenges of internet-scale applications in the future.”  Or, in less lofty terms, to teach people about cloud computing.

It’s impossible to guess what will occur as a result of this development - some very smart people are being given unprecedented access to a huge amount of computational power.  It’s hard not to think of Gdrive, though, and wonder if this is a precursor to its release.