SGI leads effort to scale Linux to 128 processors in a single-system configuration.SGI (SGI, Sunnyvale, CA, www.sgi.com) A manufacturer of workstations and servers, founded in 1982 by Jim Clark. The company was founded as Silicon Graphics, Inc., but changed to its acronym in 1999. (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :SGI) has announced plans to extend the industry-leading scalability of its SGI(R) Altix(TM) 3000 servers to encompass a record 128 processors within a single instance of the Linux(R) operating environment In computing, an operating environment is the environment in which users run programs, whether in a command line interface, such as in MS-DOS or the Unix shell, or in a graphical user interface, such as in the Macintosh operating system. . SGI, which already provides award-winning Linux OS-based Altix 3000 systems that scale to 64 Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 processors, intends to site-test 128-processor systems with national laboratories and leading universities around the world. Initial results of testing in customer laboratories are expected in early September. Participants in the global program include in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory Noun 1. Naval Research Laboratory - the United States Navy's defense laboratory that conducts basic and applied research for the Navy in a variety of scientific and technical disciplines NRL in Washington DC and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is one of nine United States Department of Energy (DOE) multiprogram national laboratories. The laboratory PNNL is located in Richland, Washington, and operates a marine research facility in Sequim, Washington. in Richland, Washington Richland is a city in Benton County in southeastern Washington, at the confluence of the Yakima River and the Columbia River. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 38,708, with a 2005 population estimate of 43,520. , and abroad, the University of Queensland The University of Queensland (UQ) is the longest-established university in the state of Queensland, Australia, a member of Australia's Group of Eight, and the Sandstone Universities. It is also a founding member of the international Universitas 21 organisation. in Brisbane, Australia, and The Computing Center at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. The program participants conduct complex research in a range of scientific fields. Their demanding work requires massive scalability at levels that can provide effective and revealing stress loads on the 128-processor system prior to its commercial availability as a standard SGI product. "In areas of advanced and important Navy research--such as 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 , climate/weather/oceans modeling and simulation, computational chemistry Computational chemistry is a branch of chemistry that uses computers to assist in solving chemical problems. It uses the results of theoretical chemistry, incorporated into efficient computer programs, to calculate the structures and properties of molecules and solids. and materials, and computational electromagnetics Computational electromagnetics, computational electrodynamics or electromagnetic modeling refers to the process of modeling the interaction of electromagnetic fields with physical objects and the environment. and acoustics--complex problems can literally take months to solve," said Wendell Anderson, Senior Research Mathematician, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. "With large shared memory systems, such as Altix running 128 processors, we can solve our most complex problems and workloads and save weeks of time because of the scalability and efficiency of the SGI architecture." "SGI customers are constantly pushing the limits of computing," said Jan Silverman, senior vice president and general manager, Industry Solutions and Services, SGI. "As soon as we launched the Altix 3000 family they asked when we would scale a single system to 128 processors. With their assistance, we are responding to their need for more processing power and all the benefits of NUMA-based computing combined with the benefits of the Linux operating system." Since its introduction, the Altix supercluster su·per·clus·ter n. A group of neighboring clusters of galaxies. supercluster A large group of neighboring clusters of galaxies, along with isolated galaxies scattered between them, the entire collection has been recognized as the first Linux cluster to scale to 64 processors within a single node and the first cluster to allow global shared-memory access across nodes. Inspired by the success of the Altix family and the powerful combination of standard Linux on Intel Itanium 2 processors, developers have ported more than 60 commercially available high-performance manufacturing, science, energy and environmental applications to the 64-bit Linux environment. More than two-thirds of those applications have been certified and optimized for the platform. The 128-processor beta program continues the growing momentum generated by the Altix 3000 family of servers and supercomputers, which earned "Best of Show" honors at its Linux World debut in January and recently was named "Product of the Year" by the editors of Linux Journal. The momentum continued in June, when the Altix family also won "Best Linux Hardware" honors at the LinuxUser & Developer Expo. Since its introduction, the SGI(R) Altix(TM) 3700 supercluster has been recognized as the first Linux cluster to scale to 64 processors within a single node and the first cluster to allow global shared-memory access across nodes. Inspired by the success of the SGI Altix family and the powerful combination of standard Linux on Intel Itanium 2 processors, developers have ported more than 60 commercially available high-performance manufacturing, science, energy and environmental applications to the 64-bit Linux environment. More than two-thirds of those applications have been certified and optimized for the platform. Availability SGI Altix 3000 servers and superclusters supporting the new 128-processor node size are expected to be available as fully supported configurations in spring of 2004, when the beta program concludes. SGI Altix 3000 servers and superclusters supporting 64-processor nodes, in configurations of up to 128 Intel Itanium 2 processors, are available today from SGI. For customers demanding even larger Altix superclusters, SGI expects to support configurations of 256 processors in September and 512 processors in October 2003. Additional Altix system technical and availability information is posted on www.sgi.com/servers/altix. |
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