Google Inc and IBM said on Monday they are providing hardware and software to universities to promote so-called parallel computing, a programming technique used to crunch large amounts of data.
Google, the leader in Web search, and IBM, the world's largest computer services company, have set up a cluster of powerful computers that students can access over the Internet to test their programs. They are also offering software and a university curriculum focused on parallel computing, which spreads out computing tasks among dozens or hundreds of computers.