Bank builds grid out of idle PCs

French bank BNP Paribas is saving money by connecting idle desktop PCs into a giant grid to boost its computing capability.

The bank's equity and derivatives division, BNP Paribas Arbitrage, is deploying Platform Computing's Symphony package to make use of the processing power of PCs that sit idle at night.

BNP IT manager Denis Esnault told silicon.com: "It's an economical reason - we have a lot of PCs which are doing nothing during the night. We have this free resource which we can use.

"The price of the [grid software] licence is quite cheap compared to the cost of buying [more] computers. The price is something very important for us - if it's not cheaper there's no economic value to doing it with the PCs."

Using the PCs in a grid at night doesn't have an impact on them in the day, he said: "We don't send calculations in the day."

At the moment the bank is getting 6,000 computing hours out of 700 machines which would have otherwise stood idle, and hopes to extend the grid further to operations in Hong Kong, New York and Tokyo.

Platform said the PC grid could be extended out to 2,000 desktops, and the Symphony software will also be used with 500 servers to further boost BNP Paribas' processing capacity.

The grid will be used to help calculate Value At Risk (VAR) calculations for the Equities and Derivatives market.

Platform Computing said that on average, financial services organisations have 20,000 desktop PCs running at only 10 per cent capacity.