Dell (DELL) reveals new low-cost 'Legion' supercomputer in London

Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) has rolled out what it is calling a "budget supercomputer" in a London event. The computer maker wants its newer and cheaper supercomputer offering to be used in research dealing with custom cures for cancer as well as searching for universe origins in all the radio wave data that spills into the earth these days using large collection dishes.

Is this a move into a new area of computing or a publicity stunt? Neither, but it is Dell's attempt at some good press, something that has been lacking for the company in recent years. With commodity computer parts available to just about anyone who wants them, Dell will once again be assembling commodity machines (supercomputers) to sell to large clients that need a lot of processing power to sift through all the data available to them. Dell's entrance (if it can be called that) is not really all that unexpected, as both competitors Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ) and Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) have been in the supercomputer field for a very long time. Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) made the practice of stringing together many standard PCs to make a supercomputer popular years ago as well.

Dell's new 'Legion' system will have the processing power of 3,000 desktop PCs and will target those who need cheap computing power available from commodity components without spending a fortune on proprietary systems and parts in the process. As Dell basically defined the role of commodity computer supplier in the last decade and a half, it should be primed to fill this role while giving in to the need of "adding value" to what could be seen as a boring commodity market. If Dell can bring more and more cheap supercomputing to the field and compete against International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) (which leads all others when it comes to built supercomputers), then it may just have something.