AMD ATHLON MP DRIVES MOST X86 CLUSTER SUPERCOMPUTERS IN EUROPE AND ASIA.

AMD (NYSE:AMD) recently announced that the latest TOP500 Supercomputer list shows that AMD Athlon MP processor-based supercomputers from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology  (TITECH) are the highest performing x86 cluster supercomputers in Europe and Asia.

The University's Heidelberg Linux Cluster System (HELICS) supercomputer performs scientific research at its Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (ICSC). The ICSC center is a leader in the fields of reactive flows, human genome decryption, bio-computing and applied physics.

"The AMD Athlon MP processor-based supercomputer, paired with our expertise in parallel computing, helps significantly shorten cycle times in our research programs including bio-computing, reactive flows, optimization problems, technical simulations and image processing," said Dr. Wolfgang Hafemann, HELICS Project Leader at the University's ICSC.

"Cluster supercomputers are increasingly recognized as the most cost-effective way of generating high-performance supercomputing," said Dr. Satoshi Matsuoka, Professor of Global Scientific Information and Computing Center at TITECH. "And, as one can see from the latest TOP500 rankings, the AMD Athlon MP processors provide the level of performance needed for compute-intensive scientific applications.

"The larger significance of these rankings is that we have demonstrated that a single university lab can achieve terascale performance," added Matsuoka, referring to systems capable of performing a teraflop, or one trillion floating point operations per second. "In the near future, I expect to see multiple labs achieving computing power on the order of tens to hundreds of teraflops, making new scientific discoveries possible."

"The potential benefits we can derive from this type of research are astounding," said Giuliano Meroni, vice president of Sales and Marketing for AMD Europe. "It's inspiring to see that, around the world, AMD processors are helping the growth of scientific sectors like bio-computer science, mathematics and chemistry.

"AMD is absolutely committed to providing high performance computing solutions for both scientific and industrial applications," said Meroni. "These accomplishments highlight how effectively AMD works with our customers, and the best-in-class results achieved by working together."

Twice each year since 1993, the TOP500 Supercomputer organization publishes its list of the 500 most powerful computer systems based on the LINPACK performance benchmark that measures performance among all classes of supercomputers. The HELICS supercomputer is 35th on the new TOP500 list, and TITECH's Presto III Cluster ranks 47th, marking the first time AMD processor-based systems have earned places in the top ten percent of the TOP500 rankings. Both systems use the Linux operating system. The most recent list was released June 20th during the International Supercomputer Conference in Heidelberg, Germany.

The AMD Athlon MP processor is a seventh-generation x86 processor designed for high-performance multiprocessing servers and workstations.

A key advantage of AMD's multiprocessing platform is Smart MP technology, which greatly enhances overall platform performance by increasing data movement between the two CPUs, chipset and memory system. Smart MP technology features dual point-to-point, high-speed 266MHz system buses with Error Correcting Code (ECC) support designed to provide up to 2.1GB per second per CPU of bus bandwidth in a dual-processor system. Smart MP technology also has an optimized Modified Owner Exclusive Shared Invalid (MOESI) cache coherency protocol that manages data and memory traffic in a multiprocessing environment.

The AMD Athlon MP processor features the patented QuantiSpeed architecture, which includes a high performance full-speed cache with hardware data pre-fetch, a fully pipelined superscalar floating point engine, and an exclusive L2 Translation Look-aside Buffer (TLB). The processor also incorporates 3DNow! Professional technology, which has 51 new instructions that extend AMD's 3DNow! technology, enabling smoother, richer and more lifelike images, more precise digital audio and an enriched Internet experience.

The AMD Athlon MP processor is compatible with AMD's stable Socket A infrastructure, and supports DDR memory technology.[sections]