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| Read
our sister magazine: 
April 1998
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Applications
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HPCN industry
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Media and visualization
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Belgium
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France
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Germany
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Russia
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Spain
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Switzerland
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United Kingdom
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| Get your HPCN information each week
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Do you want to keep up with the HPCN developments each week? With
Primeur Weekly
you get the news in your e-mail box each week. Some 10-15 messages, covering European and international HPCN
news. Ask for a four-week trial version today.
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| EUnet Belgium goes for the big pipes
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EUnet Belgium, a commercial provider in Belgium, announced that its new E3 connection (34 Mbps) between Brussels and Amsterdam is now in service. The international connection towards Paris will also be upgraded 4 Mbps bringing the total international capacity for EUnet Belgium towards 38 Mbps, tripling
the current bandwidth.
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| French Geological Institute orders Alpha cluster
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L'Institut Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP) has decided to upgrade its computer base with a high performance configuration of five Alpha 8000 servers with Digital Unix as operating system. The main areas of application will be interactive visualisation in real time of dynamic processes occurring in the natural world and simulation of natural hazards. With this order, IPGP acquires the largest commercially used Digital Unix based cluster in France to date.
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| World record for Siemens workstation
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Siemens Nixdorf has just clocked up its second world performance record within six months for its Scenic Celsius 1000 workstation. The latest figures from the SPEC Group (Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation) show that the Celsius 1000 with its 333-MHz Pentium II processor has the highest overall performance in their standard surveys for Intel-based systems.
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| Symposium on Concurrent Multidisciplinary Engineering (
CME)
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The CME symposium will bring together key personnel from industry and academi
a to discuss complex technical systems, engineering approaches, tools and methods
and the impact of CME on the societies of the industrialised and developing countr
ies. The symposium will be held in Bremen, Germany, from June 17-19.
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| Russia blocks investigation into illegal supercomputers
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Russian officials are thwarting attempts of US investigators to find out how 16 IBM high performance computers and several SGI machines have ended up at a Russian nuclear weapons factory. Obviously, the presence of the machines in Russia does not comply with the US export rules. US State officials have not yet given up hope of eventually getting more cooperation from the Russian officials in trying to shed light on the illegal route the machines have taken.
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| CICA updates to HP X-Class with 24 processors
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One of the main objectives of the Computing and Scientific Centre of Andalusia (CICA) since last winter has been to update its hardware resources in order to satisfy the needs ot the Andalusian scientific and academic community. Recently, CICA has enlarged its parallel computer to a HP X-Class model with 24 processors PA-RISC 8000, 3 GByte of main memory and a disk capacity of 40 GByte. Today, the total computing power available to CICA's nearly 2,500 users is approximately 21 Gflop/s.
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| Barcelona installs Spain's first Parsytec CCi
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The European Centre for Parallelism of Barcelona (CEPBA) had a new Parsytec CCi installed last February. The PC Cluster consists of eight dual Pentium Pro-based motherboards (at 266 MHz) which are interconnected using several high speed networks. Each dual motherboard has 128 Mbyte of memory. The machine, which is the first one of this family installed in Spain, is aimed at industrial users.
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| Credit Suisse mines its data with Darwin
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Thinking Machines' Darwin data mining solution has been selected by Zürichbased Credit Suisse for its LoyaltyBased Management Project. Using information stored in an Oracle data warehouse, Darwin will be used to mine the bank's data and deliver predictive models of customer behaviour.
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| Girobank (UK) outsources payment system to Unisys
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Girobank, handling nearly 25% of all cash register transactions in the UK in 1996, has outsourced its payment system to Unisys Payment Services Ltd (UPSL). This subsidiary of Unisys Corporation, will run the
processing operations of Girobank for an initial eight-year period.
UPSL will now be processing almost one billion transactions per annum on behalf of its clients in the UK.
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| Catch up on Fortran in London
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The forthcoming international Fortran conference, "Fortran Futures '98", will feature a
programme of lectures, tutorials and product presentations providing comprehensive coverage of Fortran 90, Fortran 95, High Performance Fortran (HPF) and Fortran 2000, as well as user applications in European research and development. The conference will be held at the Ramada Hotel near London Heathrow Airport on May 14th and 15th, 1998.
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| Last ever chance for HPCN proposals from Esprit
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Esprit put out its last call for proposals with respect to the Fourth Framework. Areas of interest are: Software Technologies (ST), for the task Specific Statistical Applications (0.4 MEcu Technologies for Components and Subsystems (TCS), various tasks (10 MEcu); High-Performance Computing and Networking (HPCN), for all tasks in Areas 5 and 6 (16 MEcu), and Integration in Manufacturing (IiM),
Area 1 (6 MEcu). All proposals will be evaluated in one step and must be sent to the Commission before 16 June 1998 at 5 p.m. The Fifth Framework does not contain an HPCN section.
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| EC
is looking for participants in US SME exchange
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The US Federal Department of Commerce and the European Commission will hold a partnership event between EU and US-based companies (chiefly small or medium-sized enterprises, SMEs) in Fort Worth, Texas, USA, on 14-16 April 1999. The event is to promote cooperation between US and EU SMEs in the areas of electronic commerce and multimedia technologies. About 200 SMEs from the EU will be selected to participate. Expressions of interest should be sent to the EC not later than 16 June 1998.
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| EU gives 14 billion Ecu for fifth, five-year R&D framework
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The Brussels-based magazine Eurinfotech
reports that EU research ministers agreed on a compromise figure of 14 bln Ecu for the budget of the Fifth Framework, the next five-year EU R&D programme, including a 3.363 bln Ecu funding for the Information Society Technology (IST) theme. The R&D framework budget will be allocated in two stages: 3.1 bln Ecu for 1998-99, and a 'commitment' of 9.64 bln Ecu for 2000-2002. The remaining 1.26 bln Ecu is set aside for the Euratom programme.
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| HP and Baan combine forces for midmarket ERP attack
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Hewlett-Packard
and Baan announced at CeBIT '98 a programme to offer midmarket customers fully configured Enterprise Resource Planning systems, backed by a Customer Protection Plan from HP. The European rollout of the HP and Baan Certified Solutions is expected in early April and is initially planned for Germany, the UK, France and The Netherlands.
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| IBM and Dassault announce strategic alliance project
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IBM and Dassault Systemes announced today a new strategic alliance to deliver new integrated solutions, called Product Development Management II (PDM II).
This product line is designed to help manage the huge quantities of data generated during a product's life cycle, such asinformation about the product itself and about the processes involved in designing, developing and manufacturing. PDM II
promises to give customers more scope to model, simulate and manage product information.
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| Origin200 server bundled with Oracle software
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Silicon Graphics and Oracle will bundle the Origin200 server with Oracle enterprise applications.
The bundle gives users better Web authoring capabilities and the ability to move information swiftly to and from the intranet and Internet.
Origin200 with Oracle enterprise for five users, Origin200 with Oracle for Web/Internet workgroup deployment and the Oracle for Web/Internet applications deployment with development kit are available now.
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| ADP buys AlphaServer systems valued at US$ 100 million
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The Dealer Services Group of Automatic Data Processing (ADP),
a Chicago based
computing and consulting company for the
automotive industry, has selected DEC AlphaServer
Unix systems to support its new Millennia3™ Series computing
platform. ADP's Millennia3™ environment will employ up to 1,000
AlphaServer 1000A systems per year and for 18,000 ADP dealers. The
agreement is worth US$ 100 million.
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| Cray fits gene plans at Tokyo University
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SGI/Cray Research has installed two 128-processor Cray Origin 2000
systems at the University of Tokyo. The supercomputers help analyse
human genes at the Human Genome Center (HGC) of the University's
Institute of Medical Science. HGC is part of the Japanese Ministry of
Education's Human Genome Project, which promotes the comprehensive
analysis of all human genes, estimated to include approximately 100,000
individual genes.
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| Concurrent sells 25 Night Hawks and develops 3 new MediaHawks
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The Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Simulation Systems Division of FlightSafety International bought 25 Night Hawk computer systems for use in pilot training simulation systems. The contract is for $1,904,000. Concurrent also announced three new MediaHawk Video Server packages designed for entertainment, and intranet applications.
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| 4 companies develop Virtual Microscope to see molecules
move
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NEC, Fuji Research, Electrotechnical Laboratories and CRC
Research Institute have jointly developed a 'Virtual Microscope',
realized using computer graphics on a supercomputer for the study of
molecular interaction. This
simulation system, enables
researchers to more accurately observe the motion of molecules during a
chemical reaction through the use of 3-D graphics.
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| Oracle beds with Thinking Machines and six other miners
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Oracle has selected Thinking Machines along with six other data
mining partners in a focused effort within the Oracle Warehouse
Initiative (WTI). This is a joint marketing and product development
programme of Oracle's Data Warehousing Solutions. These are the first
Oracle data mining alliances to be formally announced. The data mining
companies offer complementary technology and knowledge to Oracle.
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| Enter your machine for the next TOP500 list
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The Next TOP500 Supercomputer list, will be published at the Mannheim Supercomputer Seminar'98, June 18-20. If your machine is so powerful that you think it stands a chance to be in the list, enter it before April 15. Check into the TOP500 supercomputer web site for the submission panel.
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| Collective support for UnixWare 7 in the industry
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IBM, Fujitsu and HP have all announced they will support UnixWare 7, SCO's latest UNIX system environment. Fujitsu plans to commence shipping UnixWare 7 in April and is in the process of certifying its Intel processor-based teamserver range to support this new release. IBM will suppport UnixWare for its Netfinity and PC-server, beginning with the Netfinity 7000 enterprise server. HP will optimize its NetServer L Series.
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| Genias GRD resource manager now
available on DEC platform
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The GRD resources manager, developed by Genias, has been ported to the Digital Operating System in close cooperation with DEC. The Digital 4000 and 8000 series, well-suited for compute-intensive tasks with large data volumes, can now make use of GRD to administrate and fully utilize their capacity.
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| Siemens Nixdorf and Utimaco develop security solutions
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Siemens Nixdorf and Utimaco Safeware have reached an agreement on the joint development of IT security solutions. The focus of the activities is hardware and software solutions for PCs in the data and system security sectors. Integrated solutions range from chip card-based access control through special authentication processes and encryption to digital signatures and Internet/intranet security. Main targets are customers with high security requirements and industrial enterprises.
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| SGI appoints financial man as
new senior vice president
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Silicon Graphics has named Steven J. Gomo to the post of senior
vice president and chief financial officer for the corporation. The
CFO's appointment comes one month after Rick Belluzzo became chairman
and chief executive and fills a position that has been open since May
1997. Most recently, Gomo was general manager of Inkjet Manufacturing
Operations at HP.
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| Digital ships new workstations, extends 3-D powerstorm
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Digital Equipment introduced the Digital Ultimate Workstation 533a2 and 533au2, high-end dual- 533 MHz-processor
Alpha workstations. In addition, the company announced a new PowerStorm graphics card 4D51T. The
workstations run
Unix or Windows NT.
The machines
support
up to
2 Gbyte
memory and 63 Gbyte internal storage. Running HKSI's compute-intensive ABAQUS/Explicit benchmark, the Workstation 533au2 scored a top mark of 6,625.
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| NEC dumps Unix in favour of workstation NT
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NEC
will strongly promote NEC's Express5800
Intel/Windows NT-based workstations to its customers. In 1997, NEC and Microsoft announced a strategic alliance for co-developing and promoting enterprise-level capabilities and features for Windows NT and other Windows NT-based technologies.
Over time, NEC will be migrating its own mechanical and electronic CAD design users from Unix workstations to Windows NT-based Intel workstations.
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| MegaDrive Systems aims for leadership position in storage
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MegaDrive Systems, a manufacturer of high-performance, cross-scalable storage applications for Digital Media markets
intends to build a leadership position in the market for high-performance network storage products and systems, an emerging market that analysts have predicted will grow to $10 Billion by the year 2001.
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| SGI to resell systems management software
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Silicon Graphics has signed an agreement to resell Enlighten Software Distributed Systems Manager, a systems management application for networked Unix and NT systems.
EnlightenDSM is designed for workgroup and small enterprise environments. The
software features a set of cross-platform services.
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| Double your display with SGI's O2
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Silicon Graphics has developed a dual display for its entry-level
O2 workstation. With a new add-in card and secin Viewond monitor, the
available display area increases. This allows users to conduct quickly and
easily data analysis, and to interact with a greater number of
large 3D graphical images. The O2 dual monitor card will be available
in May 1998.
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| Collective support for UnixWare 7 in the industry
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IBM, Fujitsu and HP have all announced they will support UnixWare 7, SCO's latest UNIX system environment. Fujitsu plans to commence shipping UnixWare 7 in April and is now certifying its Intel processor-based teamserver range to support this new release. IBM will suppport UnixWare for its Netfinity and PC-server, beginning with the Netfinity 7000 enterprise server. HP will optimize its NetServer L Series.
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| NEC launches new family of 64-bit processors
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NEC launched the VR5400 family of 64-bit MIPS RISC
microprocessors. The processors include
dual-issue
superscalar architecture, multimedia extensions, floating-point
capability, a 64 KB on-chip cache and a 64-bit data bus. The VR5400
family will initially be available in three versions: the VR5464
processor, available in 250 MHz and 200 MHz versions, and the 167 MHz
VR5432 device.
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| Encore sells Assets of Business to Gores
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Encore Computer Corporation has signed a letter of intent with
Gores Technology Group to sell assets of Encore's Real-Time business
for US$ 5.5 million. If the sale is consummated, it is anticipated that Encore will be liquidated. As
previously announced, Encore sold its Storage Products business to SUN
in November 1997 and elected to cease development of it's NT cluster
product line in January 1998, leaving Real-Time as its only line of
business.
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| SGI launches faster processors for Origin 2000
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Silicon Graphics has launched 250 MHz MIPS R10000 RISC processors
for its Origin 2000. The bandwidth between CPU and cache has almost
doubled. Upgraded from 195 MHz R10000, the processors can be
incorporated into existing multiprocessor Origin installations. The
company also introduced two new Origins 200: the GIGAchannel and
Origin 200 QC.
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| Fujitsu Canada introduces high performance disk drives
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Fujitsu Canada, developed the Enterprise AL series, a new
generation of SCSI disk drives with up to 18.2 Gbyte capacity. The new
drive family can handle UltraSCSI-2, Ultra2 (LVD), and Fibre Channel.
The Enterprise AL series consists of five 3.5-inch models at capacities
of 4.5 Gbyte, 9.1 Gbyte and 18.2 Gbyte at 7,200 rpm rotational speeds
and capacities of 4.5 Gbyte and 9.1 Gbyte at 10,000 rpm.
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| New HP K-class servers boost web performance
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Hewlett-Packard announced a new 9000 V-Class Enterprise Server
and Exemplar server, running on HP's 64-bit 240 MHz PA-8200
microprocessor. The HP 9000 V2250 boosts TPC-C performance 30% over its
predecessor. Two new HP 9000 K-Class Enterprise Servers offer midrange
data warehousing, database, application and Web performance. Powered by
up to six PA-8200 240 MHz 64-bit processors, the HP 9000 K380 and K580
offer an additional 20% performance boost over existing K-Class models.
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| Data GeneraUnixware sets sights on becoming industry standard
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Data General, Compaq, ICL and Unisys are making a significant
investment in SCO's UnixWare operating system for delivery of a 64-bit
version to run on Intel's IA 64 Merced processors. In addition, Data
General will contribute its NUMA to the development of the UnixWare
operating system.
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| Pentium Pro's set TPC-C benchmark record
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Data General's AViiON AV 8600 SMP server the claims the highest TPC-C
performance ever achieved by an Intel based server and also the best price/performance for an eight-processor server. The server was measured at 16,101.27 order entry tpmC, with a five-year cost of ownership of $55.73 per tpmC, running Microsoft SQL Server V6.5 Enterprise Edition database software and Windows NT 4.0 Enterprise Edition operating system.
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| Cadcentre's Reality Link facilitates global plant design
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Cadcentre's new software Reality Link enables remote design teams to share a live plant project review session. The operator of a single 'host' session can walk remote project teams around a photorealistic three-dimensional model of the new plant. The remote 'satellite' users see exactly the same images as the principal 'host' operator.
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| Fastest 3-D Performance ever on a PC workstation
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Hewlett-Packard's Kayak XW PC Workstation demonstrated the fastest 3-D performance ever seen on a PC workstation, making it the world's fastest Windows NT- based system.
The company also introduced an entry-level HP Kayak XW PC Workstation with ELSA GLoria Synergy 3-D graphics card.
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| IPA animation software integrates with Solid Edge CAD
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3-D animation and visualization software company Immersive Design has signed a strategic partnership with Unigraphics Solutions. Under the agreement, Immersive Design's Interactive PreAssembly (IPA), Windows-based animation and visualization software is integrated with Unigraphics' Solid
Edge, a CAD system for mechanical assembly and part modeling.
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| Intergraph first with streaming media application
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Intergraph Computer Systems, a manufacturer of
Intel/Windows NT-based servers and workstations and RealNetworks, specialized in streaming media, have agreed to deliver RealNetworks RealSystem 5.0 and RealPublisher with Intergraph's InterServe Web Servers. With this deal, Intergraph claims to be the first Windows NT server vendor to deliver an integrated streaming media application. The system is available in May
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| Visual applications on Onyx2 improved with
250 MHZ processors
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Silicon Graphics adds 250 MHz MIPS processor technology to its
Onyx2. The systems built with these processors can deliver up to 20%
higher performance on visual computing applications such as those built
upon IRIS Performer or the OpenGL Optimizer APIs (Applications
Programming Interface), both from Silicon Graphics. The new Onyx2 250
MHz systems will be available from April 1.
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| Microsoft rushes to license new HP virtual-machine technology
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HP has launched its virtual-machine technology and class libraries
for the embedded-systems market. HP will license this virtual-machine
implementation to selected companies. Microsoft, the first licensee of
the technology, says it will use the technology to integrate Java
programming-language support with its products.
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| European backbone continues to excel
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According to the newsletter The Works of Dante
TEN-34 continues to provide a high quality backbone service to the European Research Community. An additional 10 Mbps ATM link between Frankfurt and Vienna came into operation on 9 February 1998. Portugal will join the TEN-34 network in March with a 10 Mbps satellite link to Geneva and will thus complete the TEN-34 network topology.
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| Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center gets a $2.7 million boost
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The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center has received $2.7 million from the National Science Foundation to establish a National Center for Network Engineering (NCNE).
The center will serve as a clearinghouse and technical resource to implement new Internet technologies. NCNE will be a component of the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research (NLANR).
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| Shell Exploration & Production Technology discovers ATM
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Shell Exploration & Production Technology (SEPTCo), a
research unit of Shell, supports Shell's ability to identify and
extract offshore oil and gas reserves more quickly and efficiently by
using ATM. This Fore network connects the entire company's campus and
serves a total of 1,000 systems, including Unix workstations. The
network was placed into production in September 1997.
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| New FORE switch plugs workstations into ATM
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FORE has developed the new ES-4810, a switch for connecting
workstations to ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) backbones networks.
The ES-4810 offers switched Ethernet and switched ATM desktop
connectivity through ATM uplinks at speeds up to 622 Mbps. With the
ES-4810 the company buils on the capabilities found in FORE's ES-3810
Ethernet LAN (Local Area Network) switch.
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| BAAN and Digital combine forces
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Netherlands based
Baan Company and Digital Equipment Corporation have announced the DIGITAL/Baan Certified Business Packs. The Business
Packs integrate Baan applications, DIGITAL
enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply-chain solutions for small and midsize enterprises and divisions of
large enterprises to run on
Alpha- or Intel-based systems.
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| NCSC to develop new air quality model
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The Environmental Programs group at MCNC's North Carolina Supercomputing Center (NCSC) has been awarded a
contract by the Regional Air Quality Council of Denver to develop a second-generation Air Quality Model. Denver
Policymakers
are currently developing a long-range air quality plan for the region. The model being developed by NCSC will support
this plan by providing advanced treatments of atmospheric chemistry and physics for gases and airborne
particles (aerosols).
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| US bans supercomputer exports to 50 countries
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The United States has
renewed the ban on the export and re-export
of supercomputers to 50 countries, including India, China, Pakistan,
Israel and Russia. The restriction was issued by the US commerce
department. There will be controls on sales of high-end computing
systems that can perform from 2 to 7 Gflop/s, including systems from IBM,
HP, Sun and SGI.
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| Pittsburgh PCS transfers large archives to
SDSC
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Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) moved part of its data and program files to the San Diego
Supercomputer Center and the US National Center for Supercomputing
Applications. The transfer of files to SDSC will allow researchers to
continue their NSF-funded research projects on NPACI's Cray T90, T3E,
and IBM SP-2 supercomputers. PSC has approximately 40 Tbytes of data
in its archives, of which a quarter is recent and still being
used by NSF researchers.
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| Boston University triples size of its supercomputer
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Boston University has
tripled the size of its 64-processor
system to a 192-processor Cray Origin2000 configuration to support its
Scientific Computing and Visualization group (SCV). The University has
expanded the system several times, from the first 32-processor system
installed in 1996, to the most recent expansion to 192 processors.
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| Awards for next generation internet
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President Clinton announced that 29 institutions awarded
National Science Foundation (NSF) grants to allow connection to the
very high performance Backbone Network Service (vBNS). The vBNS allows
scientists and engineers across the country to collaborate and share
computing and information resources. This latest round of NSF awards
brings the total number of institutions approved for connections to 92.
Most institutions will receive up to $350,000.
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