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| Read our live coverage of the Mannheim Supercomputer Seminar '98:
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Applications
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HPCN industry
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Media and Visualization
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TOP500
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Belgium
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Germany
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United Kingdom
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| New diagram tool analyses the TOP500
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Hans Meuer, organiser of the German Supercomputer Conference, has introduced a new tool for analysing the TOP500
most powerful computers in the world. A Kiviat diagram shows where the main market of a company is, using a graph plotting the number of TOP500 machines in different market segments. It shows that the Japanese vendors, SGI and HP are strong in the academic and research market with individual differences. IBM is strong, and SUN is
only present in the industrial market.
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| TOP500 supercomputer website gets a facelift
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The TOP500 site has a new address and a new design. With support from HPCnet, a nicely designed homepage now giving an easy interface to all the eleven lists
of the most powerful supercomputers in the world are available. You can create your own sublists by filling out a form, or make your own charts by a click of your mouse. Since it was opened in May this year, the site was visited by 17,500 people.
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| Multi Ping Pong: an alternative to the LINPACK benchmark ?
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The TOP500 list of most powerful supercomputers uses a single number, the LINPACK benchmark performance, as yardstick. Although benchmark experts question whether this single machine can really charecterize a complex parallel machine's computing potential, it seems to work . At the Mannheim supercomputer conference Larry Smarr showed that a number of real live applications gave the same performance ranking as the LINPACK benchmarks. At the same conference,
Karl Solchenbach from Pallas, Germany, proposed an additional yardstick, the "Effective Bandwidth". This new easy to measure yardstick would characterize the communication quality of a multi processor machine. The disadvantage would be that it then takes two numbers; the LINPACK to measure processing speed and the effective bandwidth for communication. Sure,
supercomputers can cope with that, but it may be just a little to complex for the human mind.
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| SGI takes high performance computing to heart
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This year's Supercomputer Seminar
in Mannheim
had an instructive evening session that closed the first conference day with a touch of philosophy.
In the beautiful University Schloss, the senior vice-president of Silicon Graphics Inc., Dr. John F. Vrolyk gave a
talk on the strategy of SGI
for
supercomputer architectures and their scientific applications in the next era.
The company is showing a strong will to meet the tremendous challenges of the new millennium with a multiplicity of architectures and high quality software.
In San Diego, the Congress of Vascular Surgeons has already received a taste of this huge computational strength.
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| Siemens signs OEM agreement with Australian software outfit
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Siemens Nixdorf
and Siemens Pyramid have signed a worldwide OEM agreement with Australian software developer Softway to offer Share II software with its enterprise server product line and Reliant Unix
environment. Share II gives systems administrators more control over the allocation of their system resources.
It
allows service providers to offer quality of service guarantees, and enables consolidation of applications running on multiple servers onto fewer, larger systems.
Share II will be available before the end of this year.
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| Sun and IBM agree to implement Java interface over IIOP
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Sun Microsystems and IBM have agreed to develop support for the Java Remote Method Invocation over the Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP). This implementation will combine the advantages of the Java RMI interface for distributed systems programming with the Object Management Group's CORBA architecture for distributed computing. The implementation will ship as standard extensions to the latest release of the Java DevelopmentKit (JDK software 1.1.6) and the next major release of this software.
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| Best Practices Award for a terabyte data warehouse
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Dayton Hudson Corporation (DHC) has received the 1998 Best Practices Award in the Very Large Data Warehouse Technology category for its data warehouse, based on the NonStop Himalaya technology from Tandem. To qualify in the Very Large category, the data warehouse must contain at least 350 Gbyte of actual data and have applications in production that provide a strategic business advantage. Dayton surpasses 1 Tbyte of user data.
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| Novartis goes for data-intensive computing
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Silicon Graphics will supply Novartis, a company in life sciences, with Origin
servers and Octane graphics workstations for Novartis' divisions around the world. The Origin2000 servers will be installed
to support Novartis' data-intensive computing environments.
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| Purchase of Dakota moves Sun further into hpc market
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Sun has acquired Dakota Scientific Software (DSS), a scientific and engineering applications company.DSS has provided Sun with the Sun Performance Library, a numerical library that Sun bundles with the Sun Performance WorkShop Fortran product line.
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| Dataram announces new
memory upgrades for RS/6000
SP
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Dataram has announced new
memory
upgrades for IBM
RS/6000
Model F50 and H50 SMP servers, and RS/6000
SP
332 MHz Wide and Thin nodes. Dataram's DRIH50/256 is a 256 MB upgrade consisting of two
128 MB SDRAM modules. The DRIH50/256 lists for $1,045.
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| Digital guarantees 99.99% uptime
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Qualifying Digital
Unix or OpenVMS clusters
can now earn a 99.99% uptime guarantee . If the system experiences more than 53 minutes of unplanned downtime in a year, the customer receives compensation in the form of reduced servicing invoices.
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| New Pentium II Xeon-based servers give even cheaper results
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Intel's
new Pentium II Xeon processor can be used for systems that scale up to eight processors and beyond. Pentium II Xeon-based servers deliver
four-processor TPC-C results a rate of 18,127.40 tpmC running on Compaq's ProLiant 7000 6/400 with Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 and SQL Server 7.0. The result of this performance is available at a price/performance point of $26.06/tpmC.
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| Compaq consolidates worldwide manufacturing
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Compaq plans to consolidate manufacturing operations among the company's worldwide facilities as it continues the integration of Digital and Tandem to its company.
The operations' objective is to deliver 95 percent of all products anywhere in the world within five days or less. But it will also result in a reduction of approximately
5,000 regular employees worldwide.
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| Hitachi improves its M parallel series
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Hitachi has expanded its
large-scale computer systems for the Japanese market by the addition of eleven new
models for each of the MP5800E and MP5600 series. The MP5800E provides up to 1.3 times the uniprocessor performance of existing models. For the MP5600E this ratio is 2.
Hitachi is currently engaged in the development of a
new generation of M Parallel Series as the successor to the MP5800E.
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| Sun launches new workstations
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Sun launched a 333 MHz version of its Ultra 10 workstation as well as the new, four-way Ultra 450 workstation. The new Ultra 10 comes with the Sun Elite3D m3 graphics accelerator. In addition to the faster UltraSPARC IIi microprocessor, the system has four times the cache of the original Ultra 10. The Ultra 450 is Sun's first workstation to provide up to 4 Gbyte of memory. The 333Mhz Ultra 10 starts at $11,095, the Ultra 450 is available at a starting price of $32, 865.
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| HP 9000 response time outshines Sun, SGI and IBM
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The HP 9000 Exemplar servers have established new results on SPEC SFS 1.1. This is the
network-file-server benchmark of importance to
engineering and scientific computing tasks.
The results, achieved on the V2250, provide 30,620 operations per seconds
and a response time of 6.9 milliseconds per operation.
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| SP World conference to be held in Dusseldorf
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September 15 and 16, the SP World '98 conference will be held in Dusseldorf, Germany. The conference is intended for IBM customers with an interest in the IBM RS/6000 SP and in commercial and technical computing. The conference will be in English with simultaneous translation of all sessions into German. The main tent sessions will also be translated into French, Italian and Spanish.
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| Fore to build
network for
GTE laboratories
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FORE Systems will provide
the backbone for GTE Laboratories'
new state-of- the-art campus network.
When completed, the network will serve more than 500 research scientists in six buildings at GTE Labs' Massachusetts headquarters.
The facility serves as a
test house for asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) wide area network (WAN) technologies and also includes a cable testing lab for new
technology development.
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| New
HP Kayak sets record for PC workstations
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According to test results published by the BAPCo
Corporation, the new HP Kayak XU PC Workstation has established a new
record for PC workstations. The new workstation shows high
graphics performance for 2-D and entry-level 3-D applications. The dual-processor-capable system features Intel's 400MHz Pentium Xeon processor . The HP Kayak XU PC Workstation
is expected to be available in August, with an estimated street price starting at $4,999.
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| SGI introduces IRIX 6.5
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Available this month, SGI introduced the IRIX 6.5, the latest binary compatible and Year 2000-compliant version of its UNIX operating system. The system has some new features such as CC-NUMA scalability within a complete 32- or 64-bit environment and and enhanced enterprise system management capabilities.
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| Sun sells 500 Starfires in retail market
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Sun's 1000 server, the Starfire, recently crossed the threshold of 500 units shipped, in part due to the millennium problem, but also due to its popularity among retailers. A data center-class server starts at around $1 million.
Traditional retailers such as Sears and Safeway, as well as 'hot' on-line retailers like Music Boulevard and Amazon.com, have recently selected the Starfire server to handle a variety of tasks, from data warehousing to electronic commerce, merchandise management and enterprise resource planning.
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| Media-video-entertainment through
HPCN
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A number of projects, organized by the Network
of Technology Transfer Nodes and funded by the European Commission, show
the benefits of the combination of high performance computing and creative
ideas in multimedia, video and entertainment give faster results and lower costs.
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| Professional satellite pictures of
the earth for free
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Satellite and aerial pictures of sites around the world, previously available only at a high cost for professional use, are now available from the TerraServer Web site. The pictures were obtained from SOVINFORMSPUTNIK , an arm of the Russian Space Agency. The TerraServer, which stores more than two Tbytes of data, is based on Compaq and Digital's 64-bit AlphaServer 8400 system running
NT, and Compaq and Digital's Storage
10000 subsystem.
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| IBM builds virtual replica of Michelangelo's Pietá
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Michelangelo's Pietá,found in the Museum of the Opera del Duomo in the Cathedral of Florence, is the subject of a 3-D replica to be build by IBM. By the end of 1998 nearly two billion bits of data will be
compiled to build a 3-D digital replica of
the Florentine Pietá. The study,a brainchild of Jack Wasserman, a historian of Italian art and Temple University professor emeritus, will shed new light on the mystery surrounding the Florentine Pietá, and lead to new technologies and applications for three-dimensional computer representations of real life items. The final result will be a single visual virtual model of the Pietá that will be set up in a computer and enables Wasserman to study this work of Michelangelo and draw some long-awaited conclusions.
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| Khoral Research and R3vis
bring stereo imaging to the desktop
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Khoral Research and R3vis Corporation cooperate in the pre-release of VUMaster, a tool for displaying and registering stereo image pairs. VUMaster is an application that combines R3vis' RM visualization technology and KRI's Khoros technology and brings it to the desktop. The application displays images in either red/blue or time-multiplexed, multi-buffered format.
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| SGI wins a Cindy for 'Six degrees of freedom'film
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Silicon Graphics has won a CINDY (Cinema in Industry) Award for the Technical Information Report/Scientific Research category.
Silicon Graphics received the award for its 22-minute video documentary entitled "Six Degrees of Freedom: Designers and Engineers Put Virtual Reality to Work." The documentary explores the evolution of the computer-human interface, entitled "Six Degrees of Freedom."
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| Sun and
Fakespace interactive model to be shown at SIGGRAPH'98
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Fakespace Virtual Model Display
systems enable engineers, designers, researchers and military commanders to view and manipulate realistic 3D computer-generated models as if they were real objects.
Fakespace together with Sun Microsystems has designed an interactive model using a beta version of the Java 3D programming environment.
The company will show this Immersive WorkBench and its newVersabench
at SIGGRAPH'98
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| San Diego buys AlphaServers
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San Diego Supercomputing Center has recently acquired two new AlphaServers 4100 as part of a research agreement with Digital to evaluate this platform in biochemistry, graphics, and data-intensive applications. The two AlphaServers are the first phase of a larger acquisition that will cluster 16 processors in four nodes. SDSC will evaluate the "Rawhide servers", as a high-end server in a supercomputer environment. The evaluation of the Digital SMP cluster is part of the selection process for a teraflops production system to be installed under the NPACI (National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure) program.
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| Storm busters, a fact of life in five years
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Scientists from Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) claim that life-threatening thunderstorms and tornados
can belong to the past within five years. New numerical weather prediction technologies
recently tested at PSC will avert some of the loss from bad storms in the future. Within the next five years, the U.S.
National Weather Service and some private companies, such as airlines, will implement new computer-based models that can provide detailed information on severe local weather.
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| Sun chips in a third of agreed purchase price
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Sun Microsystems has offset a total of $10.1 million against the $35 million portion of the purchase price for Encore's storage products business which was payable early this month.
The is based upon Sun's estimate of certain claims for indemnification under the Asset Purchase Agreement between Encore and Sun dated as of July 17, 1997. Encore is contesting substantially all of the set off amount and is in the process of analyzing each of the contested claims.
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| New release of BetaPlanner for the steel industry
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Belgium based A.I. Systems has released a new version of the BetaPlanner for the IBM RS/6000.
The BetaPlanner is part of the SteelPlanner family of products for scheduling the production of steel factories. Designed for the scheduling of hot strip mills and cold mills, the BetaPlanner
produces automatically optimised production schedules taking into account technical, commercial and logistical constraints.
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| Fritz the chess computer is beaten by mere mortal
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Not all chess players get defeated by chess computers. During this year's summit 'Chess Classic '98' the Indian chess player Viswanathan Anand not only won against Kasparov, Kramnik and Ivanchuk, but he also beat Fritz. This computer chess programme ran on an SNI Primergy NT system.
Fritz, from the Germany based company ChessBase,
posted the best with 9,5 points and beat 330 players, among them 36 grandmasters in an open tournament.
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| Apache strikes Siemens BS2000/OSD business servers
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Siemens Nixdorf will be making it's WWW server software Apache
available for its BS2000/OSD Business Servers.
Until now, Apache has mainly been employed by Unix users. The company
is now also providing BS2000/OSD users with the currrent version of Apache, free-of-charge.
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| EMC hits
1,000 Tbytes with sewage application
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EMC's customers have migrated more than one million Gbytes (1,000 Tbytes, or one Pbyte) of information using EMC's Symmetrix Data Migration Services (SDMS). The one-Pbyte milestone was surpassed by Berliner Wasser Betriebe, Germany's largest water supply and sewage disposal company, which utilized SDMS to move information from six dispersed IBM 3990 storage systems onto EMC Enterprise Storage.
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| Commerzbank puts its money on Windows NT
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The Commerzbank Frankfurt/Main has commissioned Siemens Nixdorf to fit Windows NT servers and NT clients at around 1000 of its branch offices in Germany. The order will include the shipment of 1100 Intel-based high-end Primergy servers (models 460 and 760), and
15 000 Scenic Pro personal computers.
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| Sun and Origin sign alliance to strengthen grip on SAP market
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Sun and the Global SAP Practice of Origin International, a division of the global systems integrator Origin, have signed a Joint Marketing Agreement to combine efforts in providing customers with solutions. The first step of this agreement is a strategic marketing alliance on the SAP integration market. The alliance allows the companies to leverage Sun technology in key vertical industries by managing all conditions of the sales cycle.
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| Interview with Peter Rosenbladt, General Manager R&D
Telecommunications Business Unit at Hewlett-Packard
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Peter Rosenbladt, General Manager R&D Telecommunications
Business Unit at Hewlett-Packard, visited Munich so Primeur took the
chance to have a discussion with him. Before that he was involved in
the development of new microprocessor architectures and pushed for
cooperation with Intel on the IA64 architecture. We discussed three
topics with him and Hewlett-Packard's role in these fields: trends in
microprocessor architecture; high availability of computer systems; Internet and Telecommunications, basic technologies. Here is a summary of the main points made by Peter
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| IBM Mainframes lead the SAP R/3 SD-Benchmark
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For quality assurance reasons SAP has
defined several R/3
benchmarks
to test hardware and software. But as usual in real life,
they started their own for marketing and world-record reasons. One of
the best known is the SD-benchmark (Sales and Distribution). It can be
simulated in the two-tier (presentation and application server on one
computer) and three-tier (presentation, application and database on
different machines) client-server configuration. In the timeframe 1997
- 1998 six records have been shown, 2000 SD-benchmark user up to 6900
in the parallel SD-benchmark in July by "good-old" IBM S/390
mainframes.
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| Sun Microsystems Germany breaks billion DM barrier
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Helmut Krings, General Manager Sun Germany, presented the
latest business results and the Germany specific revenues, the new
units after the reorganisation and acquisitions. Gert Haas, Marketing
Manager, highlighted the market and the customers.Revenues: 9.791
Billion US$, 14% growth; Earnings: 906 Million US$, 23% growth; Net
Earnings (subtracting the acquisitions): 762 Million US$, or 22%
growth. The revenues in Germany the first time broke through the 1
Billion DM wall, exactly 1.023 billion DM with a growth of 29.5%
compared to last year. In the fiscal year 1995 Sun reached 501 million
DM, thus within three years the revenues are doubled - within 13 years
from zero to one billion.
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| Sun dominates German work station market
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IDC market share figures for the workstation area in Germany shows that
in the first quarter of this year SUN sold more than 50% of all
machines. He mentioned that Sun was the only vendor that could stay with the
number of machines and had a little growth, while competitors sold
less, as the Unix market is shrinking.
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| So how are the German Supercomputer centres doing?
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Germany is supercomputer country number 1 in Europe. The
large supercomputer centres heavily invested during the recent years in
hardware that brings them to the top supercomputer centres in the
world.
The Eastern
European countries are catching up and are now home to big centres
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| UK wins Battle for £26M supercomputer
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The UK Minister for Science, Energy and Industry, John Battle, has announced a £26 million supercomputer procurement contract for UK Research Councils. The supercomputing service will be provided by a consortium, Computation for Science (CfS), led by Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) with Silicon Graphics and the University of Manchester. A 700 Gflop/s peak performance Cray T3E-1200E will be installed at the University of Manchester. The installation is to commence immediately with a small system and service expected on stream by the autumn.
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| HP invests 30 million bucks in Bristol
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The new
$30 million dollar,HP Laboratories research facility, based in Bristol, England is now officially opened. It is the first facility that HP has built outside California for research.
HP invests over $300 million annually in its worldwide Laboratory programmes.
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| Quantum moves forward
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the QUANTUM network, the successor of the TEN-34 network will use
ATM
as a bandwidth management tool to optimise the use of the
circuits. The individual national research networks will have the choice between ATM or IP
access to the network.The QUANTUM network will receive co-funding from the EC ESPRIT and Telematics for Applications programmes. The QUANTUM Policy Committee has also mandated DANTE to negotiate detailed arrangements with the EC ACTS programme for the support of ACTS projects as well as with the Commission in general to prepare the final EC contract for QUANTUM.
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| European high speed backbone
shows 99.94% uptime
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According to "The works of Dante", the
availability of the PanEuropean research
network backbone TEN-34
remains high, with an average access port availability of 99.94%.
Between January and June 1998, traffic in the TEN-34 network increased by an average of 7.7% per month. Dante's intercontinental link
to the US was successfully upgraded from 34 to 45 Mbit/s
on 26 June. Upgrade was urgently needed since packet loss in the direction towards Europe had exceeded 1000 pps during the busiest
parts of the day.
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| Million dollars contract for HIPPI controllers
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Genrico has been awarded contracts to provide over one million dollars worth of HIPPI (High Performance Parallel Interface) controllers for Compaq/Digital and Sun Microsystems superservers at United States departments of Defense and Energy.
HIPPI is an
interfacing technology which operates bi-directionally at an aggregate of 1600 Mbits per second.
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