IBM OPENS ITS FIRST DEEP COMPUTING ON DEMAND CENTER IN EUROPE

New Center in Montpellier, France Will Meet Growing Demand For Supercomputing Power On Tap

Armonk, New York - May 13, 2004 - IBM today announced the opening of the first Deep Computing Capacity on Demand center in Europe. The new facility, located in Montpellier, France, is the second of its kind in the world, and will provide customers access via the Internet, to immensely powerful, highly secure supercomputers.

The Montpelier On Demand center joins IBM's Deep Computing Capacity On Demand center in Poughkeepsie, New York, as the only two facilities in the world to offer supercomputing power on tap to companies in industries such as petroleum, life sciences, digital animation and financial services.

Mentor Graphics, an Oregon based technology leader in electronic design automation (EDA), will be one of the first to utilize IBM's new computing center, tapping into super computing power from IBM's eServer pSeries 690 systems in Montpellier, as well as eServer xSeries systems based in Poughkeepsie. Mentor is also testing it's Calibre design to silicon software platform on AMD Opteron processor based IBM eServer systems located in the Poughkeepsie facility.

"Massively parallel computing with high speed clusters is a key enabler for minimizing cycle time in preparing IC designs for manufacturing," said Charlie Albertalli, director of marketing for Calibre RET & MDP products at Mentor Graphics. "The IBM computing centers provide us with virtually unlimited parallel computing capacity to characterize and test our Calibre multi-threaded, distributed processing performance on hundreds of cpus on an as needed basis at a reasonable cost."

"Deep Computing Capacity on Demand centers enable companies to tap IBM supercomputing power without the costs and management responsibility of owning their own supercomputer, said David Turek, vice president, IBM Deep Computing. The Centers are an extremely attractive solution to a broad spectrum of companies that have peaks and valleys in their need for supercomputing power. We expect the new Montpellier facility to extend the same opportunities to businesses and researchers in Europe."

The Montpellier center will offer customers access to IBM eServer pSeries AIX or Linux servers and xSeries systems running Linux or Microsoft Windows with related disk storage. In order to meet the ever increasing demand to this type of computing power, IBM recently expanded its Poughkeepsie center to include more than 2,300 IBM xSeries Intel Xeon processor, eServer AMD Opteron processor, and BladeCenter systems.

IBM also plans to implement grid technologies to enable resource sharing within and across the two Deep Computing Capacity on demand centers. Grids are expected to enable a new alternative pay-for use model to complement the existing reservation model, allowing clients even more convenience and flexibility in accessing and paying for supercomputing power.

IBM Deep Computing Capacity on Demand enables customers to:
* easily tap into massive amounts of supercomputing power that could be otherwise unaffordable
* rapidly deploy supercomputing capacity in response to urgent business opportunities
* pay for supercomputing capacity on a variable cost basis, avoiding large up-front capital outlays and long term fixed IT cost commitments
* lower overall supercomputing ownership and operating costs
* take advantage of a scalable, highly secure and highly resilient on demand operating environment
* improve price/performance for compute-intensive applications and processing of massive amounts of data

About Mentor Graphics

Mentor Graphics Corporation (Nasdaq: MENT) is a world leader in electronic hardware and software design solutions, providing products, consulting services and award-winning support for the world's most successful electronics and semiconductor companies. Established in 1981, the company reported revenues over the last 12 months of about $675 million and employs approximately 3,700 people worldwide. For more information about Mentor Graphics, visit www.mentor.com.

About IBM

IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across IBM and key Business Partners, IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions and technologies that enable customers, large and small, to take full advantage of the new era of e-business. For more information about IBM, visit www.ibm.com.