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February 2000
Primeur is a monthly Virtual Magazine on High Performance
Computing
and
Networking in Europe. It is produced by an
editorial
team
composed of professionals in publishing and HPCN. You can put the editorial
team to
work as well. Read about our services and
advertising
opportunities
and find out about the friendly
rates
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Breaking news
- just a click away:
Coverage of the TOP500 list in Primeur
The TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers is a record of the
500 fastest
supercomputers in the world, the centres and the countries where they are
located. Primeur has a number
of articles and services supporting this effort. The list was presented at the
large supercomputer conference SC99, also covered by Primeur.
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Storage management
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Media and visualisation
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Linux
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Java
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HPCN industry
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Data management
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Cluster computing
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Benchmarks
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Applications
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United Kingdom
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The Netherlands
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Switzerland
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Germany
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| NCSA Tests WebEx Collaboration Tool
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NCSA is testing
a
new service that allows scientists to work
collaboratively over the Web. The National Center for
Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
is evaluating it, together with its US nationwide partners who are part of the
National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance).
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| IBM leads U.S. Patent race for seventh consecutive year
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For the seventh consecutive year, IBM was awarded the most U.S. patents in 1999. With a record 2,756 patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, IBM topped the next closest company by more than 900 patents.
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| NPACI's Teraflops IBM SP Accepted by SDSC
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The 1,152-processor IBM RS/6000 SP system at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) was officially accepted by SDSC management December 30 after successfully completing a battery of tests that demonstrated stable operation, good performance, and high throughput. The test results show that the new machine will provide the capability to solve problems in days that typically require weeks, months, or years on smaller machines.
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| NEC granted 1,842 US patents
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NEC Corporation (NEC) was awarded more U.S. patents than any other non-U.S. company in 1999 and placed second among all recipients of American patents after IBM.
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| Clinton announces nearly a $3 billion increase in US Twenty-First Century Research Fund
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In a speech at California
Institute of Technology, US President Clinton announced that he will
include a $2.8 billion increase in the "Twenty-First Century Research
Fund" in his FY2001 budget, including a $1 billion increase in
biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health and double the
largest dollar increase for the National Science Foundation in its 50
year history.These investments should
enable America to
continue to lead in the 21st century by increasing support in all
scientific and engineering disciplines, including biomedical research,
nanotechnology, information technology, clean energy, and
university-based research.
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| Second SX-5 installed at Veritas
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Veritas DGC Inc. announced that it has begun installation of a new
NEC SX-5/6A vector supercomputer in its Houston data processing
facility. The installation is the second in a series of upgrades to
Veritas' high-end data processing systems. An NEC SX-5/6B began
production in the Singapore data processing center in November 1999.
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| AmericaOne
race boat depends on HP's supercomputing power
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The design team of the successful AmericaOne
race boat
relied extensively upon a 128-processor HP
9000 Enterprise Server. HP provided virtually unlimited access to the
supercomputer, an unprecedented resource that allowed the design team
to more accurately analyze and evaluate myriad options when designing
the boat's keel, hull and sails in a short amount of time.
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| SC99 -
a view from a European old-timer
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Being an "old -timer" as an attendee to
the Supercomputer
events
(guess I only missed one out of the over ten events sofar), I will take the liberty of sharing with the readers personal comments, perceptions and impressions not strictly technical: somewhere
else these parts
have certainly duly been covered. Giacomo Polosa
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| Scientific Supercomputing book available in print
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The book "Scientific Supercomputing:
Architecture and Use of Shared and Distributed Memory Supercomputers" written by Prof. Willi Schoenauer from the University of Karlsruhe, is now available in print too. Up to now, it was only available as Internet book with 500 - 1000 accesses per month.
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| 27th SPEEDUP Workshop
on Scientific Data Management and Understanding in Computational Science
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The 27th SPEEDUP Workshop, March 16-17, in Lugano Switzerland, is intended to bring together members of academic institutions, private enterprises and government who are interested to obtain an overview of the state-of-the-art in scientific data processing and to learn about new methods in management of, and knowledge discovery in, very large amounts of scientific data generated in computational science modeling and simulation processes.
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| Dutch Virtuality web site
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The newly launched website Virtuality gives an overview of the visualisation and virtual reality products, centres and companies in The Netherlands. Also usage in
application areas such as construction, health care, entertainment, engineering and scientific visualisation is described.
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| Mercury Computer Systems Selected by BAE Systems for Radar Signal Processing Enhancements
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Mercury Computer System
has been selected by BAE Systems to provide equipment for the progressive enhancement of the data processing subsystems of the AR327 Commander Radar. The use of Mercury hardware during the next five years will ensure that the AR327 technology remains competitive and cost-effective.
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| 68 IBM Nighthawks roost at Exeter University
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Exeter university unveiled its latest supecomputer acquisition, an IBM RS/6000 SP with 68 Power 3 processors, (christened by IBM as the Nighthawk), with a peak performance of 55 Gflop/s. This machine is capable of holding more data than the British Library, (1 TeraByte), rated at about 350 in the Top-500 list, is 20th most powerful in the UK and second only to the Hitachi machine at Cambridge for a single university system.
According to the Vice Chancellor, Sir Geoffrey Holland, the new system will be used by 11 research groups within the University of Exeter. He said: IBM is a partner to our research and will help the groups to develop computing strategies to tackle these projects. In all cases it will enable researchers to significantly increase the range and depth of their work. That is why this machine is such an asset to a research-driven
university such as ours". Examples of projects which include, Jupiter's Weather anti-counterfeit measures and mine safety
are given below. An interview with Michel Teyssedre, the IBM RS/6000 worldwide director of marketing is published separately in Primeur.
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| IBM is committed to deliver a "flexible server" on silicon - an interview with IBM's Michel Teyssedre
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Michel Teyssedre, the new IBM RS/6000 worldwide marketing director, was interviewed by our UK editor, Chris Lazou, while attending the unveiling of an IBM RS/6000 SP with 68 Power3 processors at Exeter University. The main thrust of his argument is that IBM is following its strategic business model of using the RS/6000 SP as the basic component to deliver computing power for both business and the High Performance Scientific market. In this model both customers benefit, the commercial business gains from the new developments of the ASCI programme and the High Performance Scientific end gains from affordable supercomputing made available because of high volume sales.
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| UK HPC support for academics restructured
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Daresbury Laboratory and university of Edinburgh are collaborating with university of Manchester to provide HPC support to academic researchers in the UK. This restructuring is part of the funding approved by the UK research council EPSRC for the next three years. The approved funding contains two strands:
Ongoing dedicated support for research groups and HPCI Consortia with existing grants and for individual research groups applying for new grants at the three institutions
Daresbury, EPCC or CSAR.
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| Sanger Centre extends its Compaq Equipment by an additional $3.2 Million searching human genomes
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The Sanger Centre, located in Hinxton, Cambridge, UK, was founded by the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. It is a genome research center which wants to further the knowledge of genomes. For these tasks they use about 250 clustered Compaq Alpha systems and large memory Alphas running TRU64 Unix operating system and StorageWorks storage subsystem as a high-availibility system for the huge amount of data, they produce. In December 1999 Sanger invested 3.2 Million US Dollar and installed another 83 Alpha processors and more RAID storage.
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| Visitor number HOISe news server with Primeur and VMW magazines more than doubled
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The number of different visitors to the Primeur & VMW news server
HOISe more than doubled in the past year, breaking the 10,000 barrier in
December with over 10,100 different visitors during that month. The number of page views
was close to 50,000.
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| Nike's development runs on
NAG software
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The Numerical Algorithms Group's
(NAG) IRIS Explorer, is helping a
sports and fitness company, NIKE Inc. NIKE's 'R&D SWAT Team' look
for technological developments that can take it into the future with improved
products and processes. IRIS Explorer's task at NIKE includes smooth, accurate,
and fast visualization of 300,000 data points from foot scans to help the
company get a better understanding of what the internal shape of the shoe should
be.
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| AIR launches global weather and climate prediction center
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AIR, a Boston-based
catastrophe modeling company,
launched
a Global Weather
and Climate Prediction Center. The long-range weather predictions
issued by AIR meteorologists will be used to enhance AIR's existing
catastrophe risk assessment capabilities and to support the growing
global market for Weather Derivatives.
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| It takes a guitar and a supercomputer to built a
luxury car
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Lexus announced a new luxery car, the LS 430.
To do the surface calculations they used a supercomputer. To know what "luxery" means, they visited guitar builders.
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| Helisys signs technology license agreement with Toyoda Machine Works
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Helisys
announced a multi year technology licensing
agreement with Toyoda Machine Works, Ltd. of Kariya, Japan, for the
licensing of Helisys rapid prototyping
Laminated Object Manufacturing (LOM) systems to
Toyoda to manufacture and sell within Japan.
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| IBM SP with 786 processors installed for US weather forecast
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The
US National Weather Service has installed a 786 processor IBM SP supercomputer for weather forecasting. By the end of September the machine will have been upgraded to 2,5 Tflop/s performance and be one of the largest weather forecasting machines in the world.
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| Maple 6 released with NAG technology incorporated
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The Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG)
announced that its strategic partner Waterloo Maple is releasing Maple 6 for Windows, Unix Macintosh, and Linux.
Maple 6
enhancements
speeds up complex, technical computation projects.
The new math engine delivers a tightly integrated suite of symbolic and numerical solvers.
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| New versions of NAG on Hitachi SR8000 supercomputer
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The Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) have signed a new multi-year agreement to make NAG's high-performance computing libraries available on the Hitachi SR8000 supercomputer. The SR8000 is a latest
generation
high performance computer from Hitachi. Under this agreement NAG will make available the Fortran 77, Fortran SMP and Parallel Libraries on the SR8000.
Hitachi has installed a direct line from NAG to a SR8000 in Japan. The Leibniz-Rechenzentrum in Munich is an early SR8000 customer and a long time user of the NAG Numerical Libraries.
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| IBM introduces fast
4-way web server
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IBM
introduced what it claims to be
the world's fastest 4-way web server. The first entry Unix server to implement performance-enhancing copper technology, IBM's RS/6000 44P Model 270 is powered by up to four 375 MHz POWER3-II microprocessors and
AIX. The Model 270 became the world's fastest 4-way Web server by establishing a new SPECweb99 benchmark record of 1359 simultaneous connections.
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| More than 100 Starfires in retail
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Since its introduction, SUN has
has shipped well over 100
ES10000 Starfires to leading retailers, both traditional and online. Retail powerhouses such as OfficeMax and Sears, multi-channel retailers such as Eddie Bauer, as well as online retailers such as CDNOW and Spiegel have chosen the Starfire system to run mission-critical applications ranging from electronic commerce to warehousing, merchandise management and enterprise resource planning.
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| IMSL Fortran 90 Library available for several supercomputers
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Visual Numerics
announced
the availability of Version 4.0 of its IMSL Fortran 90 Library
for the Cray SV-1, the NEC SX-4, the Fujitsu VPP 500, and the
Hitachi SR8000 supercomputers
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| Visual Numerics Announces JWAVE Version 3.0
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Visual Numerics' JWAVE 3.0
is now available.
JWAVE
is a client/server solution that uses Sun Microsystems' Java components
to rapidly develop and deploy applications across an enterprise
via the Internet or an intranet. These JWAVE applications are
100% Pure Java and let users perform numerical analysis and visual
interpretation of large, complex datasets.
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| ESI acquires Dynamic Software
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ESI Group
purchased
Dynamic Software, a software editor well known for its
stamping simulation product OPTRIS.
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| Compaq top ranks new SPEC CPU2000 benchmark suite
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Compaq Computer Corporation's Alpha systems, with the new Alpha EV67 processor, have achieved the top ranking in the new SPEC CPU2000 benchmark suite.
The new tests confirm previous SPEC benchmark results, which also rated Compaq AlphaServer systems at the top, the company says.
The Alpha EV67 processor is currently shipping in the AlphaServer GS and SC series and the AlphaStation XP1000.
The new processor will be introduced into all AlphaServer systems, including the DS and ES series.
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| NEC on top of STREAM memory bandwidth benchmark
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With the SX-5,
NEC has taken the first position in the STREAM benchmark that measures sustainable memory bandwidth
for
computational operations on shared memory
systems.
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| Tracing a billion photons with Condor
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The Limber Observatory in Texas used Condor Flock to trace a billion photons to solve the physics of Be star disks. The Wisconson Condor system was used
for twenty runs,
on 50 computers that each needed
between 12 to 48 hours computing time for each run.
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| EMC storage network connection for AIX
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EMC Corporation introduced
the EMC Fibre Channel Interface Kit for AIX. The new interface kit enables RS 6000 and SP servers running IBM's AIX operating system to connect via switched Fibre Channel into an EMC Enterprise Storage Network (ESN).
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| 3M Boardmount
interconnect
designed for high-end systems
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A new
interconnect system for interconnecting printed circuit boards in
high-end applications is
available from the 3M Electronic Products
Division.
he 3M
.8 mm Board-to-Board, Straight Surface Mount Plug
and Socket Interconnect System is a 200 position, PCB stacking
interconnect. It is parallel mounted, and has snap-in connections and
polarized contacts. Typical applications include supercomputers, CPUs,
telecom switching systems, storage devices and test equipment.
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| Hitachi announces products plan of 32 way
IA-64 servers
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Hitachi will release its forthcoming line of IA-64 Inte
Itanium processo
based servers and workstations during the second half of this year. The company i will provide its high scalability 32-way servers and cluster systems incorporating its advanced mainframe technologies. Hitachi will adopt multiple operating systems technology on one server to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO).
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| New high performance 800 MHz Xeon processor from Intel
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Intel Corporation today introduced a powerful Pentium
III Xeon
processor at 800 MHz targeting the rapidly growing segments for workstations and "front-end" servers -- a class of single- and dual-processor Internet servers for e-business functions such as Web site hosting and e-commerce authentication.
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| SGI break-even
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SGI announced
results for its second quarter. Revenue for the second quarter was $648
million, a 5% decrease from the previous year. The company reported a net
profit of $9 million,
compared with a net loss of $20
million,
in the same quarter a year ago. The company's
second quarter results included a $16 million reduction in previously estimated
restructuring costs. Excluding restructuring effects, the company's net loss
would have been $1 million.
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| Sun's revenues higher than ever
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Sun Microsystems reported results for the second quarter which ended December 26, 1999. Revenues for the second quarter were $3.554 billion, up 27 percent compared with the second quarter of fiscal 1999. Net income for the second quarter was $353 million, up 30 percent compared with last year's second quarter net income of $273 million (excluding acquisition-related charges for fiscal year 1999).
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| Another addition to Tera's Board of Directors
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Tera Computer Company's board of directors has elected Dean D. Thornton a member of the
board.
Thornton becomes the ninth member of Tera's board of directors.
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| NEC developed "uncrackable" encryption
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NEC says it had developed computer encryption
technology offering a far higher degree of security than products
currently in use. Engineers at the firm claim that even a supercomputer would need
several hundred million years to crack the code.
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| IBM RS/6000 S80
fastest
Java server
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IBM
announced that a six-way RS/6000 S80 server running the AIX operating system has set new records for Java
performance and scalability, surpassing the previous record holder,
containing three times more than the number of processors. The achievement establishes the S80 as the leading computing platform for Java server applications, says IBM.
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| HP's Linux Customers Gain Flexibility from Free VMware Software
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Hewlett-Packard Company and VMware, Inc. announced initial results of their joint promotion of free VMware software on HP VISUALIZE PL450 and XL550 Personal Workstations for Linux desktop customers.
According to HP and VMware, approximately
30 percent of HP's and VMware's European customers took advantage of the offer in its first month, December 1999.
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| All
IBM servers to work with Linux
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Reporting that IBM is putting its brawn behind the Linux software platform, making all its network computers compatible with an operating system IBM now sees as superior to Unix or Microsoft Windows for future Internet commerce, concludes AP.
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| SuSE
opens
support center in Bremen
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SuSE Linux AG, one of the leading Linux specialists worldwide, is
opening
a new support center in Bremen.
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| MSC.Software Launches Linux Division Company
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MSC.Software Corp.
a developer of simulation software,
announced the creation of the MSC.Linux division supporting Linux
products and services.
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| TurboLinux licenses IBM's Java technology for Linux
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TurboLinux
has licensed IBM's
Developer Kit for Linux, Java Technology Edition, that includes a Java
Virtual Machine (JVM) which gives customers the ability to enhance
database performance, simplify application installation, and minimize
the resources needed to maintain their databases.
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| Amerada Hess chooses Red Hat for supercomputing cluster
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Red Hat says that Amerada Hess
has chosen Red Hat Linux to run a supercomputing cluster in
its Exploration Department. The cluster of 128 workstations running on
the Red Hat Linux operating system replaces a leased supercomputer and
saves Amerada Hess more than $2 million.
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| Delphi Automotive to use EAI VisProcess for European operations
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Delphi Automotive Systems has adopted VisProcess from EA
for use in product and production planning in its European operations.
VisProcess has been implemented in Delphi's European technical centers and will be used in manufacturing sites throughout Europe to reduce time-to-market for new products.
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| Canada's First Full-Sized, 3-D Visualization Centre for Oil and Gas Exploration
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PanCanadian Petroleum Limited opened Canada's first, full-sized
petroleum visualization centre - a high-tech, three-dimensional theatre
for the advanced exploration of oil and natural gas.
PanCanadian's TerraDeck visualization centre projects dynamic and
vibrant geological images onto a large, curved screen that is eight
feet tall and 24 feet wide. Viewers don electronic 3-D glasses and
underground structures jump off the screen, immersing geologists,
geophysicists and engineers inside target reservoirs.
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| New HP VISUALIZE X-Class Personal Workstation Using VISUALIZE Memory Architecture
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Hewlett-Packard Company
introduced the HP VISUALIZE X-Class Personal Workstation, based on the latest Intel 733MHz Pentium
III processors. The system features the SDRAM-based HP VISUALIZE memory architecture. The HP VISUALIZE X-Class Personal Workstation boosts designer productivity for advanced technical applications.
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| SGI spins-off Mediabase in Kasena
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SGI
formed a new company out of its
media streaming server
software,
MediaBase. SGI will be a
significant minority shareholder in the start-up, named Kasenna Inc., and has
secured additional funding from leading venture capital firms U.S. Venture
Partners, Alloy Ventures and Entertainment Media Ventures that will enable
Kasenna to further develop MediaBase.
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| Alcatel selects Concurrent's
Mediahawk video server
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Alcatel, purchased a Concurrent MediaHawk
Video Server as part of its decision to demonstrate the ease of implementing Video-On-Demand (VOD) over an Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) network to its existing and potential customers. Alcatel has already won the contract with Australia's leading telecommunications supplier, Telstra, to supply the backbone of its ADSL rollout.
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| Advanced Data Storage-Management Techniques for High Performance Computing
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An up-coming workshop that will take place 23-25 February 2000 at CLRC - Daresbury Laboratory, UK aims to be a forum for scientists from various disciplines to discuss their current and future data requirements with other scientists, leading vendors and representatives from international data and computing centres. It will also provide the possibility for computing and data centres to present their work and gather information on the newest data storage, data management and high performance computing technology.
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| Cable & Wireless to provide 'Distributed STAR TAP' global network connectivity
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Cable & Wireless has been chosen as
a provider of network
connectivity services for the STAR TAP
(Science, Technology, and
Research Transit Access Point) initiative.
STAR TAP is the primary peering location for international
connectivity. It connects U.S. federal agency networks, including the
National Science Foundation's vBNS, the Department of Energy's ESnet,
The Department of Defense's DREN, and NASA's NREN, as well as the
Internet2's Abilene network, with their counterparts worldwide.
International networks connected to STAR TAP include Canada's CA-net3,
France's RENATER2, The Netherlands' SURFnet, Nordic countries'
NORDUnet, Israel's IUCC, the CERN European Laboratory for Particle
Physics, Russia's MIRnet, the Asia-Pacific Rim (APAN), Singapore's
SingAREN and Taiwan's TANet.
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