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| 14 August 2000 |
EuroFlash no. 421
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Primeur is the premier news service on HPCN and supercomputing in Europe. Primeur Weekly delivers the news each week in your e-mail box. Check out the Primeur web site for the Calendar, the Analysis section with background on the TOP500, the Monthly en Live! special issues, information on HPCN centres and industry.
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TurboLinux the new TurboLinux Operating System for Compaq's Alpha systems. TurboLinux OS for Compaq's Alpha systems is a 64-bit Linux OS designed and built for compute-intensive tasks. TurboLinux OS for Alpha supports all major Alpha BIOS, very large files and is tuned for floating-point calculations.
The White House has extended its relaxation of export restrictions on high-speed computers, allowing them to be sold to both military and domestic customers in 50 nations, including China and Russia. he new measure will double the number of computers allowed to be sold without government approval to 50 'Three Tier' nations, which included Vietnam, India, Pakistan, as well as China and Russia. The top speed allowed to be sold will be 28,000 mtops, near the speed of four of Intel's new Itanium processors due out this fall.
The programme of the joint Speed-up/ORAP workshop available to be held at CERN, Geneva, October 5-6 2000 is available. Central theme is new architectures and technologies for high-performance computing with presentations on trends in microprocessors, reconfigurable computing, quantum computing and more.
Blue Sky Studios, founded in 1987, is a unit of Fox Filmed Entertainment and won the Academy Ocar Award with its short film "Bunny". For their computer-animation in films they install a 512 processor Compaq Alpha system in White Plains, NY. The computer is based on AlphaServer DS10L, low profile. Forty of them can be put in a rack. If they are equipped with the 466 MHz Alpha, they deliver a peak performance of nearly 480 GFlop/s peak performance. The expected Linpack performance of about 340 GFlop/s would rank the machine in the top 50 of the Top500 list.
The U.S. Army Communications Electronics Command (CECOM) has awarded Motorola a $49.7 million delivery-order contract for the Joint Services Work Station Production Program. The Joint Services Work Station (JSWS) is a real-time, multi-sensor Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence (C4I) system that utilizes the same software as the JSTARS Common Ground Station (CGS) programme.
The US Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has validated that the SGI IRIX 6.5.3 operating system is compliant with the Defense Information Infrastructure (DII) Common Operating Environment (COE).
ull-fledged nuclear tests are off-limits but scientists quietly continue to test plutonium's power by exploding small, potent packages 1,000 feet beneath the Nevada desert. The plutonium, some of which comes from old weapons, is ``shocked'' by a high-explosive detonation that reproduces the pressures and temperatures that occur when a nuclear device is detonated. Data obtained through high-speed cameras and laser holography are used to refine the supercomputer codes that simulate full explosions.
Ford Motor Company recently acquired two additional Cray SV1 supercomputers, making it the company's largest Cray SV1 customer with a total of five systems. Ford will use the new machines to perform safety and structural analysis and speed time to market for its latest vehicle models. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The US Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) has purchased an IBM supercomputer to perform the basic research that may help meteorologists prevent future "Perfect Storm"-type maritime disasters. The new supercomputer -- installed by Logicon, a Northrop Grumman company -- can process two Tflop/s, making it one of the largest supercomputers in the world. The most powerful machine in the Department of Defense (DoD) computing arsenal, the RS/6000 SP will be used to model the world's oceans, as well as tackle the complex calculations required in key DoD research and development initiatives.
NEC received an order for a 1.28 Tflop/s scalable parallel vector (PVP) SX-5/128M8 supercomputer that will be installed at the Cybermedia Center of Osaka University in Japan. This 128 processor system will not only be the largest PVP ever delivered, but will also be the largest-scale system installed in Japan. Based on today's Top500 List of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, which uses Linpack performance as the sole metric for rating, this system will be the 5th most powerful.
hillips Petroleum Company has signed a $3.6 million order for the first Cray T3E-1350 system, a faster model of the product line that holds the current world record for computer problem-solving speed. Phillips will use the new supercomputer to help find new oil deposits and lower exploration and development costs. The 136-processor Cray T3E-1350 supercomputer will be installed at Phillips' Bartlesville, Okla. headquarters facility in August, and is expected to complete the customer acceptance process by late September.
Cray Inc. reported results for the company's second quarter. These are the first combined results reflecting the April 1, 2000 acquisition of the Cray Research business assets from Silicon Graphics Inc. For the second quarter ended June 30, 2000, Cray Inc. reported revenues of $51 million, compared to revenues of $22,000 for the second quarter of 1999. Exclusive of amortization of acquisition expenses, the company reported a net profit of $5.1 million, compared to a net loss of $6.7 million, in the year ago period. Including the $1.7 million in amortization expenses related to the acquisition of the Cray business unit assets, net income for the second quarter of 2000 was $3.3 million.
Viking Components is now shipping 4 GByte capacity upgrade kits for the IBM RS/6000 M80 server and 1 GByte capacity upgrade kits for the IBM RS/6000 H80 and F80 servers.
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