Liquid Computing

About Liquid Computing

Liquid Computing was an information technology company that operated in the unified computing and high-performance computing markets.

The firm was established in 2003 by Canadian engineers Brian Hurley and Mike Kemp. Both founders brought valuable experience from their time at the telecom equipment manufacturer Nortel, where they were involved in building supercomputers for the U.S. government's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA).

Headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, with additional offices in the U.S., Liquid Computing specialized in selling hardware components such as servers, storage, and networking systems. The company's business model focused on creating unified computing systems that integrated standard data center resources with management and control software. This approach aimed to provide a comprehensive "datacenter in a box" solution. Its client base was primarily in North America, and it formed strategic partnerships with major technology firms including Intel, Microsoft, AMD, and NetApp.

The company's flagship product line was LiquidIQ. The first version, LiquidIQ 1.0, was introduced in 2006 for the High-Performance Computing sector, utilizing a proprietary interconnect scheme with AMD's HyperTransport architecture. In 2008, the company released LiquidIQ 2.0, a more comprehensive unified computing system. A subsequent version, LiquidIQ 3.0, was announced in 2009, powered by Intel's Xeon 5500 series processors. Despite securing funding from investors like VenGrowth, ATA Ventures, and the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), the company ceased operations in February 2010.