U.S. Navy installs new SGI Onyx 3400 supercomputersMountain View 12 March 2001 tThe US Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWC-AD), Patuxent River, Md., has expanded its high-performance computing center with the addition of two SGI Onyx 3000 series visualization systems. The new SGI Onyx 3400 supercomputers at NAWC-AD's Air Combat Environment Test and Evaluation Facility (ACETEF) will be used to test and evaluate advanced next-generation U.S. military aircraft such as the F-18 E/F, Joint Strike Fighter and V-22.
NAWC-AD's high-performance computing (HPC) Distributed Center was funded
under the Defense Department's High Performance Computing Modernization
Program (HPCMP). The multimillion-dollar upgrade includes two new
28-processor SGI Onyx 3400 machines with seven InfiniteReality3 graphics
pipes each, as well as upgrades to existing Silicon Graphics Onyx2
machines, storage area networks and network upgrades.
This latest upgrade-the third since 1996-increases the capability of the
HPC Distributed Center to 150 SGI processors with 82 Gflop/s of compute
performance, 23 SGI InfiniteReality graphics pipes, 2TB of online disk
storage and 12TB of offline tape storage.
With the ability to scale from four to 32 CPUs and drive up to eight full
graphics pipelines and eight simultaneous graphics users, the SGI Onyx 3400 is
designed to meet the most demanding and changing needs of customers such as
the U.S. Navy. Only the SGI Onyx 3000 series of high-performance graphics
systems has the power and real-time visualization capability to concurrently
process imagery, video, 3D terrain and geospatial data.
Many Department of Defense facilities and test projects will use the
increased capabilities of the NAWC-AD HPC Distributed Center to support both
real-time and batch processing efforts. Real-time uses include driving
Modular Miniraster Displays for Advanced Research and Training for cockpit
visuals, and running avionics models, running high-fidelity real-time models
of threats, systems-under-test and mission environment models. Real-time
range support includes processing of in-flight radar cross-section
measurements. Non-real-time uses include computational electromagnetics
analysis, computational fluid dynamics and synthetic aperture radar/inverse
synthetic aperture radar image processing.
The new SGI Onyx 3000 series is the world's most powerful series of
visualization systems, providing breathtaking performance. Designed to
simultaneously process 3D graphics, 2D imagery and video data, the SGI Onyx
3000 series scales from single-user systems to those that combine the ultimate
in supercomputing and visualization technologies.
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