CPLEX solvers for Sun Ultra HPC servers bring unparalleled performance to resource planning applications; Sun and CPLEX achieve linear scalability and order of magnitude performance improvements for resource allocation problems.MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 30, 1997--CPLEX Optimization Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. today announced the availability of CPLEX(TM) Solvers for Sun(TM) Ultra(TM) High Performance Computing (HPC (Handheld PC) A palmtop computer that weighs less than one pound and runs specialized versions of popular applications. Microsoft coined the term for its Windows CE operating system, which is an abbreviated version of Windows. See Pocket PC. ) servers. The new Solvers achieve greatly increased performance by adding Sun-developed compiler parallelization and multithreaded multithreaded - multithreading sparse matrix solver technology to CPLEX mathematical programming mathematical programming Application of mathematical and computer programming techniques to the construction of deterministic models, principally for business and economics. software. Applications based on these mathematical optimization algorithms will help users achieve lower costs through quicker, more efficient planning, better resource usage, and the ability to solve problems of greater complexity than ever before. The new Parallel Solvers offer tremendous performance improvements for complex applications such as electronics manufacturing planning and scheduling. Such improvement, for example, would allow manufacturers to reschedule re·sched·ule tr.v. re·sched·uled, re·sched·ul·ing, re·sched·ules To schedule again or anew: rescheduled the meeting for the following week; rescheduled the debts of many developing nations. factory activity daily, if necessary, rather than being limited to once a week or less. CPLEX mathematical optimization algorithms are incorporated into applications available from independent software vendors in nearly every industry. "Sun's scalable hardware combined with CPLEX Parallel Solvers makes classic linear programming applications available for practical business use," said Mark Tolliver, Sun vice president of market development. "With Sun's scalable multiprocessor architecture, users can choose the required number of processors to give the response time they need for their application. Consequently, enterprises can get real-time response to their large-scale business planning problems." "The availability of CPLEX Parallel Solvers for Sun HPC servers is exciting news for any business with large or difficult resource allocation resource allocation Managed care The constellation of activities and decisions which form the basis for prioritizing health care needs problems," according to Todd A. Lowe, President of CPLEX Optimization Inc. "We see order-of-magnitude performance improvements by taking advantage of Sun's multithreading Multitasking within a single program. It allows multiple streams of execution to take place concurrently within the same program, each stream processing a different transaction or message. capability. For users, this represents a major paradigm shift A dramatic change in methodology or practice. It often refers to a major change in thinking and planning, which ultimately changes the way projects are implemented. For example, accessing applications and data from the Web instead of from local servers is a paradigm shift. See paradigm. : it is now possible to solve problems never before considered solvable. And the good news for Sun users is that CPLEX-based applications run with no changes with CPLEX Parallel Solvers for Sun. The availability of Parallel CPLEX should significantly expand the use of these machines in business software markets and applications." CPLEX Solvers are used in applications for nearly every industry with complex resource allocation problems, including: manufacturing scheduling and planning, logistics planning and route optimization in the transportation industry, call routing optimization and network planning in the telecommunications industry, financial planning Financial planning Evaluating the investing and financing options available to a firm. Planning includes attempting to make optimal decisions, projecting the consequences of these decisions for the firm in the form of a financial plan, and then comparing future performance against and portfolio optimization, utility planning and dispatch, supply chain management, agriculture, health care, and defense. Benchmark Results On a multi-day airline fleet assignment problem, supplied by a major US airline, CPLEX Parallel Barrier solver on an 8-cpu Ultra HPC 6000 supercomputer (based on 167 MHz (MegaHertZ) One million cycles per second. It is used to measure the transmission speed of electronic devices, including channels, buses and the computer's internal clock. A one-megahertz clock (1 MHz) means some number of bits (16, 32, 64, etc. UltraSPARC(TM) microprocessors with 1 Megabyte on-board cache) decreased total solution time from over a day (on one cpu) to approximately four hours. The algorithm demonstrates near linear scaling, achieving a run-time with 16 processors of approximately two hours and twenty minutes. This problem involves over 125000 variables in determination of the objective function. The same problem when run on an 8-cpu Ultra HPC 4000 supercomputer (based on the 250 MHz UltraSPARC II microprocessor with 4 Megabyte on-board cache) was again completed in a little over two hours. These results demonstrate an excellent scaling of the algorithm with number of processors, clock speed and cache size. On an oil industry mixed-integer programming problem, CPLEX running on an Ultra HPC 6000 demonstrated greater than 100 percent scalability. A 6X speedup was achieved employing four threads, with performance continuing to improve as additional threads were deployed. The 10 thread performance on the HPC 6000 was better than 40X faster than on prior-generation machines. Developed to Run on Sun HPC Servers CPLEX Parallel Solvers were developed to run on Sun Ultra HPC servers. High performance computing is a model for solving the most computationally complex problems through the application of parallel computing technology in applications such as logic and circuit simulation, computational fluid dynamics Computational fluid dynamics The numerical approximation to the solution of mathematical models of fluid flow and heat transfer. Computational fluid dynamics is one of the tools (in addition to experimental and theoretical methods) available to solve , and statistical trend analysis. On Sun's servers, such complex applications are processed by threading instructions across multiple parallel processors to greatly improve run time. Sun's Ultra HPC servers utilize Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP (Symmetric MultiProcessing) A multiprocessing architecture in which multiple CPUs, residing in one cabinet, share the same memory. SMP systems provide scalability. As business increases, additional CPUs can be added to absorb the increased transaction volume. ) server architecture, which provides near-linear scalability as processors are added. The Ultra HPC series supports Solaris(TM), Sun's networked SMP operating environment. Optimized for multiprocessing and multithreading, the Solaris environment makes the most of Sun's innovative high-performance technologies. CPLEX Optimization Inc. is a leading developer of high-performance mathematical optimization algorithms. CPLEX optimizers empower most of the world's largest and most successful corporation's mission-critical resource allocation applications. Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision, "The Network Is The Computer(TM)," has propelled Sun Microsystems Inc., (NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on "SUNW SUNW Sun Microsystems, Inc (former stock symbol; now JAVA) SUNW Stanford University Network Workstation (Sun Microsystems, Inc) "), to its position as a leading provider of hardware, software and services for establishing enterprise-wide intranets and expanding the power of the Internet. With more than $7 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found in more than 150 countries and on the WorldWide Web at http://www.sun.com . -0- NOTE TO EDITORS: Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun Logo, The Network is the Computer, Ultra, and Solaris are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC (Scalable Performance ARChitecture) A family of RISC CPUs from Sun that runs mostly under Sun's Solaris, but also under Linux and BSD operating systems. After development began in the mid-1980s by David Patterson of the University of California at Berkeley and Bill trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems Inc. CPLEX is a registered trademark of CPLEX Optimization Inc. Press announcements and other information about Sun Microsystems are available on the Internet via the World Wide Web using a tool such as Netscape or NCSA (1) (National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Urbana-Champaign, IL, www.ncsa.uiuc.edu) A high-performance computing facility located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Mosaic. Type http://www.sun.com at the URL URL in full Uniform Resource Locator Address of a resource on the Internet. The resource can be any type of file stored on a server, such as a Web page, a text file, a graphics file, or an application program. prompt. CONTACT: Sun Microsystems Computer Company Christine Holland, 415/786-4174 christine.holland@Corp.Sun.Com or CPLEX Optimization Inc. Todd A. Lowe, 702/831-7744 tlowe@cplex.com http://www.cplex.com |
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