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January 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
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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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XML news
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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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Cluster computing
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Applications
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United Kingdom
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Switzerland
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Scotland
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Russia
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Germany
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| Texas universities buy 56-processor SGI 2400
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Texas Tech University System in Lubbock, Texas has selected a 56-processor SGI
2400 server for Texas Tech's newly
established High-Performance Computing Center (HPCC), which is housed in The
Institute of Environmental and Human Health (TIEHH) at Reese Center, formerly
Reese Air Force Base.
The system provides both the computational and the
visualization functionality to enable the scientific studies associated with
more than 60 Ph.D. programs, as well as a broad spectrum of government and
private-sector projects.
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| HPC clearinghouse at NLANR
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The National Laboratory for Applied Network Research (NLANR) invites high
performance computer users to preview its new High Performance Connections
Applications Database.
The applications database is the initial component of an HPC clearinghouse that
NLANR is developing as an online resource for people who use high performance
networks. This online clearinghouse will provide support services and information
about projects, applications, and related HPC resources.
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| US NOAA
funds river forecast initative
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The US National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's FY 2000 budget includes $1 million for
implementation of the Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service, an
advanced river forecast initiative that will help protect lives and
property. AHPS will significantly improve river forecasts and management in the
United States by providing new information, including visual displays,
which will assist local managers in making decisions on water
management. New products will depict the magnitude and uncertainty of
river flow events forecasted from days to weeks in the future.
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| DoE Review concludes stockpile stewardship powered by ASCI works
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US Secretary of Energy
Bill Richardson
released the results a review of the stockpile stewardship program concluding it
is
sound and developing the science, technology, and production
capabilities needed to maintain the long-term safety, security and
reliability of the nation's existing nuclear weapons without
underground nuclear testing. The Blue Pacific
ASCI supercomputer at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is an import tool
simulating testing.
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| US National Finance Center selects IBM S/390 and RS/6000 servers
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The USDA National Finance Center in the USA has selected IBM S/390 and RS/6000 servers to run its new Thrift Savings Plan System, the 401K plan for all federal government employees.
With nearly 2.5 million people enrolled in the program, the Thrift Savings Plan represents more than $85 billion worth of investments.
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| MPIDC2000 - Message Passing Interface and High-Performance Clusters
Developer's and User's Conference
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A call for participation has been issued for the MPIDC2000 - Message Passing Interface and High-Performance Clusters
Developer's and User's Conference
March 20-23, 2000, to be held at Cornell University, USA.
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| Euro-Par 2000 - High-Performance Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery
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A Call for Papers has been issued for
Euro-Par 2000.
Munich, Germany.
August 29 - September 1, 2000 concerning the topic
"Topic High-Performance Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery". Closing date for this, and other Europar topics, is January 31 2000.
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| Bertelsmann selects nCube in launch of Germany's first major interactive TV trial
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Bertelsmann Broadband Group (BBG), the subsidiary for
interactive broadband services of media giant Bertelsmann AG, has announced its selection of
nCUBE to supply technology for interactive television in Germany.
The service will be offered
through regional cable networks and ADSL.
The first installation will be in Cologne (NetCologne).
Technical trials will begin mid-December, the service will start in spring 2000. Ten more
installations are scheduled next year.
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| Fastest European made supercomputer inaugurated
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The fastest supercomputer "made in Europe", the 192 processor hpcLine at PC2 at the University of Paderborn, was inaugurated on November 11. In the TOP500 list, presented by Hans Meuer at the inauguration meeting, the machine is listed at position 351. The machine is not only used for "traditional" supercomputer applications, but also for rendering services and airline scheduling.
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| Russian computer chip gets banker, says beats Intel
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British investment bank Robert
Flemings said
to Reuters it hoped to nail down funding by the middle of next
year for Russian computer engineers who say they have developed a
microprocessor that beats anything in the West. The engineers, who developed computers operating Soviet missile defences, say
their E2K chip runs several times faster than a chip in development by Intel
and could roll off assembly lines in three years if they
can secure funding.
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| Russia and India to jointly develop applications for PARAM-1000 supercomputer
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India and Russia Tuesday inked two
agreements to jointly develop application software based on Indian
PARAM-10000 supercomputer and to forge a joint venture for
manufacturing silicon wafers and devices used by the semiconductor and
electronics industry.
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| Summer Scholarships in Edinburgh
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Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre's Summer Scholarship
Programme is an opportunity for undergraduate students of any
subject, with programming experience, to spend ten weeks working
on high performance parallel computer systems.EPCC will be offering 12 scholarships in 2000.
These 10-week
scholarships,
are open to
talented students in any discipline who have completed at least
two years of undergraduate study, and who have programming
experience in either C and/or Fortran.
The Programme will begin in Edinburgh on Monday 3rd July 2000,
and will run for 10 weeks.
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| TRACS brings HPC researchers to Edinburgh
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Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre is coordinating an EC-funded project to bring European researchers for short visits to associated departments in Edinburgh to collaborate on projects involving HPC.
Next closing date for applications is January 12, 2000.
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| CSCS Installs NEC SX-5 Supercomputer
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ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) and NEC Corporation
Tokyo signed a contract for the installation of a new-generation SX-5
supercomputer system early next year at CSCS, the Swiss Center for Scientific
Computing in Manno (TI).
The configuration will have 8 processors, 64 GBytes of memory and a total peak
performance of 64 GFlops (64 billion floating point operations per second).
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| Vector Processing Renaissance
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At the 10th Machine Evaluation Workshop held on the 25-26th of November 1999 at Daresbury Laboratory, UK, Christian Lantwin of NEC said that: "new parallel vector processor technologies incorporated in systems such as the NEC SX-5 have stimulated a vector processing renaissance in Europe". The workshop organised by the Distributed Computing Support Programme (DisCo) of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), was intended to help researchers find out the best machine for their application.
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| Fujitsu GP7000F servers achieve two performance records
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Fujitsu Limited
current mid-range Solaris workhorse,
the GP7000F Model 600 with up to eight SPARC64(TM) GP 300MHz processors, has
achieved two performance records certified by both SAP AG and Baan. This news
comes soon after the announcements of much larger and even higher performance
32- way and 64-way processors systems in this product range.
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| IBM RS/6000 S80 Server and DB2 Set New Performance Record for SAP R/3
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IBM
announced a record-breaking Standard Application Benchmark result for SAP R/3 Release 4.0B inter-enterprise business solutions on the RS/6000 Model S80 Enterprise Server.
The S80 server, with IBM's DB2 Universal Database, supported 1,708 Sales and Distribution (SD) benchmark users in the two-tier client/server benchmark configuration.
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| Veritas completes NEC SX-5 installation
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Veritas DGC
completed the
installation of its new NEC SX-5/6B vector supercomputer in its data processing facility in Singapore.
This new SX-5/6B is the geophysical industry's most powerful processing vector
supercomputer in the Asia Pacific region and will greatly increase Veritas'
ability to meet demand for advanced 3D seismic processing both regionally and
worldwide. The new 48 Gflop/s system is connected to the Veritas data processing network
via a 100 MegaBytes per second high-speed connection.
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| ESI Group announces new parallel version of PAM-FLOW
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ESI Group released
the Massively
Parallel version of PAM-FLOW.
PAM-FLOW is a fully integrated
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software able to solve the most
complex fluid flow problems, such as turbulent flows around or inside
vehicles, and rotating flows in turbomachinery. A distributed memory parallel version is available on SGI O2000, HP
K/V/N class, IBM Power3 servers and Fujitsu VX/VPP supercomputers.
There are also versions for work stations and
shared memory parallel machines.
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| Molecular Simulations to develop chemical R&D software for
Intel
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Molecular Simulations plans to work with Intel in developing
molecular simulation software for Intel's IA-64 architecture.
MSI's industry-
tools include the DMol3 and CASTEP quantum mechanics codes for
accurately predicting the structure and properties of materials.
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| MSI
and Unilever's R&D
enter materials design software agreement
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Molecular
Simulations anounced an agreement to continue the successful
implementation of materials design software at Unilever.
This agreement is the
latest in a series of collaborations between the two companies that are helping
to establish Unilever as a leader in computer-aided research.
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| Ford and IBM sign strategic services agreement for Europe
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Ford and IBM have
announced a multi million dollar strategic services agreement over five years. The agreement involves the creation of purpose-designed Accelerated Solutions Centers (ASCs) in Essex, in the UK and in Cologne, Germany which will support Ford's business across Europe. It is expected that the new centers will be able to run 16 development projects concurrently in each location which will lead to around 100 new applications a year across Europe.
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| International workshop on parallel matrix algorithms and applications
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An International workshop on parallel matrix alogirthms and applications will be held on 18-20 August 2000, Neuchatel, Switzerland. This international workshop aims to be a forum for the exchange of ideas
and competence for specialists in those areas of parallel computing that
are based on matrix algorithms.
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| OSC and PGI collaboration to promote Linux cluster computing
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The Portland Group and OSC (Ohio Supercomputer Center)
announced that OSC has acquired 200 copies of PGI Workstation, PGI's suite of parallel Fortran, C and C++ compilers and tools for Linux workstations.
In addition, PGI and OSC have also announced the formation of a strategic alliance to enable and promote the use of Linux cluster systems for parallel computing throughout Ohio's public and private colleges and universities.
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| Compaq new clustered supercomputer AlphaServer SC series
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In a Munich press meeting Compaq announced its new business strategy and the AlphaServer SC series, a Teraflop cluster of SMP servers connect via a high-speed Quadrics interconnect. Actually the top system which is delivered - and will be finalised by end of 1999 - to the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. as part of the the ASCI PATH FORWARD Program will have a peak performance of .7 TFlop/s. Compaq disclosed its further development plans in Alpha processor as well as in the SC series.
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| Sun opens second production line for Starfire
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Sun Microsystems
doubled manufacturing capacity by opening a second Starfire production line, this one housed at the company's Newark
manufacturing plant. Fully operational since August of this year, the Newark line complements an existing Starfire production line located in Beaverton.
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| eOnline selects Sun Enterprise Servers as platform of choice for large SAP customers
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Sun Microsystem
and eOnline, an SAP certified application service provider delivering
enterprise-strength solutions, entered a global market agreement for SAP inter-enterprise software solutions for mid- and large-sized companies worldwide. Under the
agreement, valued at more than US$ 90 million, eOnline will use Sun's
Enterprise
and Netra
servers as the preferred platform for delivering services to customers with more than 500 users.
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| Sun doubles partitioning capacity of Starfire systems
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Sun Microsystems
plans to boost the computing power and partitioning capacity of its
high-end Starfire systems in an effort to take business away from mainframes.Among enhancements to the high-end, data center server systems, Sun will roll out servers with double the logical partitioning capability. Starfire,
will allow for 16 partitions
within a single box, Sun executives said. Previously, the Starfire had logical
partitioning capacity for only eight partitions.
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| New IBM top supercomputer Blue Gene
to study human body
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A
computer - nicknamed "Blue Gene" by IBM researchers who are developing it - will be capable of more than one quadrillion operations per second (one petaflop).
This is 500 times faster than the world's current fastest supercomputer. Blue Gene's massive computing power will initially be used to model the folding of human proteins. This fundamental study of biology is one of the
"grand challenge" applications.
Learning more about how proteins fold is expected to give medical researchers better understanding of diseases, as well as potential cures.
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| Fussy neural network at heart of Perpetua real time supercomputer
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Combining the
performance of a supercomputer with the redundancy, disaster resistance, and
fault tolerance of a military aircraft, Patmos
today announced the
Perpetua
supercomputer/supersystem.
The Perpetua employs the power of
parallel, distributed processing in an integrated, modular platform.
Designed
for mission-critical applications where both state-of-the-art performance and
100% uptime are critical, every processing and data storage element in the
Perpetua is redundant and interlinked.
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| Dataram memory for HP 9000 L-Class
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Dataram
announced memory modules
for Hewlett-Packard's HP
9000 L-Class family of Unix
servers.
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| SGI selects Primus for e-service
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PSGI has selected
Primus software to provide eService to its customers and customer
service organisation. SGI
will use Primus products to
develop a problem resolution database that customer service technicians
can share internally and provide self-service capabilities for
customers via the company's extranet.
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| More than 1000 Sharks on order
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IBM today announced
that more than 1,000 Enterprise Storage Servers (ESS), code-named
'Shark',
have been ordered since its availability in late September
in various industries. Shark scales from 420 Gbyte
to over 11 Tbyte.
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| Supercomputer Simulation wins Gordon Bell Award for Livermore Lab
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A team led by the
Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
collaborating with the University of Minnesota and IBM, solved a
supercomputer problem with broad applications including supernova
evolution, combustion physics, and supersonic vehicle propulsion and
dynamics. Their efforts were awarded supercomputing's 1999 Gordon Bell
Award for best performance.
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| Now 8 Bbyte of memory on an Octane workstation
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SGI
has extended the maximum system memory capacity for its
Octane
visual workstations by introducing
2 GByte memory modules. The new memory modules can expand
system memory up to a maximum of 8 GByte.
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| Fujitsu Siemens supports Java-2
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Fujitsu Siemens Computers, announced
support for the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise
Edition (J2EE) from Sun Microsystems. J2EE will further simplify the implementation of complex
e-commerce enterprise solutions for Fujitsu Siemens Computers'
BS2000 Mainframes. The first products corresponding to the Enterprise
Edition of the new Java platform are already available, and others are
to follow in the year 2000.
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| SUN
relveales
Java 2
enterprize package
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SUN launched the Java
2 Platform, Enterprise Edition
(J2EE), a unified platform that simplifies multi-tier enterprise
application development and deployment in today's diverse corporate
environment, and enables businesses to protect and leverage existing
infrastructure investments. J2EE is also a key piece of the end-to-end Java
solution: the technology engine for end-to-end eCommerce. The unification
of industry tested and adopted enterprise Java technologies -- such as
Enterprise JavaBeans™ technology and JavaServerPages
technology -- along
with support for the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) in J2EE definitively
extends Java technology computing into the enterprise-class arena.
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| SuSE Linux 6.3 features new graphical installation
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SuSE Linux 6.3 launches December 1st with a new graphic installation program, making it even easier to get into Linux now. With one DVD or six CD-ROMs, SuSE Linux provides a current and consistent Linux operating system with over 1500 application programs including well-known programs like apache, samba, sendmail, GIMP, and RealPlayer 5.0. StarOffice 5.1a is included and it can now be used commercially, license-free.
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| Linux version of IRIS Explorer 4.0
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NAG
released a
Linux version of its
IRIS Explorer 4.0, visualisation application development environment. IRIS Explorer 4.0 is the first release to be ported to Linux and enables users to collaborate on the analysis of their data, even when geographically separated.
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| Linux Port for the Java 2 Platform
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Sun plans to ship a Linux version of the Java
2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE). The union of the Java 2 platform and Linux satisfies a growing desire among developers to utilize the power of the Java 2 platform with the popular open source Linux operating system. The release of J2SE on Linux, along with distribution through Inprise Corporation, will enable developers to easily and quickly deploy Java technology based applications on Linux servers, as well as make it simpler to port existing Java applications to Linux.
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| New Linux tools from SGI
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SGI
released
several performance technology features
to the Open Source Software community. Additionally, the company has released tools
to enable Linux developers to greatly simplify the process for resolving bugs
in enterprise Linux installations.
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| Dunn delivers Linux
servers to
US Department of Defense
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Dunn Computer Corporation
has
completed shipping forty-one, high-
performance, custom configured Dunn Model 760 Servers running Red Hat
Linux Version 6.0 to a US Department of Defense Research & Development
Laboratory.
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| IBM RS/6000 SP and Linux Clusters Getting Hitched in New Mexico
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IBM and the University of New Mexico (UNM) started a joint research project to integrate leading-edge IBM RS/6000 SP supercomputing technology running AIX, IBM's UNIX operating system, with the fast-developing world of Linux superclusters. The system, called Vista Azul (Blue Vista in Spanish), will create a unique "hypercluster" environment composed of IBM SP and Linux technologies, that will allow researchers to explore the optimal use of Linux for scientific applications as well as management strategies for hybrid clusters. This multi-technology platform will serve as a test bed for UNM and IBM researchers to integrate heterogeneous information systems into a solution that could be replicated at other science and technology sites.
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| IRIS performer 2.3 real-time rendering toolkit for Linux
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SGI
announced the
immediate availability, free of charge, of IRIS Performer
2.3 for Linux , a real-time
rendering toolkit for Intel processor-based systems running Linux.
IRIS
Performer is SGI's flagship high-performance graphics software toolkit on
IRIX.
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| SGI and Aechelon deliver new jet simulator visualization system
to US Navy
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SGI and
Aechelon Technology will deliver a new 360-degree full-view
image generation system for the U.S. Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier II jet
simulator.
The SGI/Aechelon image generator based on a 24 processor Onyx system provides high levels of
realism for simulated mission rehearsal and training.
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| VNI's JWAVE used in Aegis Discoverant
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Aegis Analytical Corp., a developer of Manufacturing Informatics
software systems, has selected
VNI JWAVE as the data visualization engine
of its Discoverant product.
Aegis also
announced that Hoechst Marion Roussel, the pharmaceutical arm
of Hoechst AG, has signed a contract to install Discoverant site-wide
at the pharmaceutical giant's North American manufacturing facility
in Kansas City.
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| NASA opens new, virtual airport control tower at Ames
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Constructed at a cost of $10
million, a new two-story FutureFlight Central facility was jointly funded
by NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The facility is
designed to test - under realistic airport conditions and
configurations
- ways to solve potential air and ground traffic
problems at commercial airports. Twelve rear-projection video screens provide a seamless 360- degree
high-resolution view of the airport or other scenes being depicted. The
imaging system, powered by supercomputers, provides a realistic view of
weather conditions, environmental and seasonal effects and the movement
of up to 200 active aircraft and ground vehicles.
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| W3C released new XHTML draft recommendation
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The W3C consortium
has released a new version of the draft XHTML recommendation.
It is expected to be accepted as a new standard within two months. XHTML is a reformulation of HTML in XML and is expected to play an important role in distributed environments and applications depending on interoperability.
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| job
advertisement |
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The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH
Zurich) invites applications for a
Professor of Computational Sciences
and
Director of the Swiss Center for Scientific Computing CSCS
in Manno TI. The Director’s duties will include managing CSCS and projects
of the Swiss universities requiring high performance computing resources and
expertise as well as research, teaching and services in collaboration with
universities and industry in Switzerland and abroad.
CSCS is the national center for scientific computing, serving all universities
in Switzerland. As a result of the present reorientation the center will
increase its activities in the areas of research and teaching. CSCS is part of
the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, and is
situated close to Lugano in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland.
Applications are solicited from candidates with excellent scientific records as
well as internationally recognised research and teaching activities in one of
the central fields of application of supercomputing such as computational
chemistry, biology, physics, fluid dynamics or climate modelling. The successful
candidate will have exceptional management skills and experience with high
performance computing systems. An excellent command of the English language is
essential, Italian and German would be an asset.
Please submit your application, curriculum vitae, list of publications and a
table of completed projects to the President of ETH Zurich, Prof. Dr. O.
Kübler, ETH Zentrum, CH-8092 Zurich, no later than January 31, 2000.
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