| News digest March 2005 |
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HPCN industry |
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| IBM, Sony, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and Toshiba disclose key details of the Cell chip |
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At the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), IBM, Sony Corporation, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and Toshiba Corporation for the first time disclosed in detail the breakthrough multi-core architectural design, featuring supercomputer-like floating point performance with observed clock speeds greater than 4 GHz, of their jointly developed microprocessor code-named Cell.
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| Sun's UltraSPARC IV processor-based Sun Fire servers set 14 world records with real world applications |
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Sun Microsystems Inc. has unveiled new industry-leading results with its Sun Fire UltraSPARC IV-based servers running SPECweb99_SSL for secure web-based applications and Linpack for high performance computing. This follows similar records for the Sun Fire midrange platform with key ISVs such as Siebel Systems, further demonstrating the ability to deliver optimized application performance and breakthrough price/performance through Sun's balanced system architecture. Since the launch of UltraSPARC IV-based system, Sun Fire servers have set 14 world records across a range of industry standard and ISV-specific benchmarks.
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| Hyperion and Sun prove enterprise-class scalability and performance for business-critical reporting |
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Hyperion, an expert in Business Performance Management software, and Sun Microsystems Inc. have unveiled the results of a joint performance test, which demonstrated unprecedented reporting performance and sub-second response times of Hyperion Performance Suite running on the Solaris platform. In the test of complex reports with joins and calculations, Hyperion Performance Suite generated 42.3 pages per second per CPU, or 87.6 million pages per day. In the test of simple tabular reports, Hyperion Performance Suite on Solaris OS generated 121 pages per second per CPU or 250.9 million pages per day.
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| Sun Microsystems outpaces NCR Teradata in Data Warehouse TCO study |
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A study by Ventana Research found Sun outpaces NCR Teradata in delivering the best total cost of ownership (TCO) for enterprise-class terabyte data warehousing. The study found Sun outranked NCR Teradata in the categories most important to enterprises looking to build and maintain a terabyte-class business intelligence data warehouse (BIDW) infrastructure, including initial purchase price, upgrades, and maintenance, and costs associated with personnel, hardware and software.
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| Sun boosts performance on Solaris OS for UltraSPARC processor-based 4-way carrier grade server |
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Sun Microsystems Inc. has unveiled a 1.6GHz performance enhancement to the Netra 440, a Solaris OS for UltraSPARC processor based 4-way carrier grade server, furthering Sun's leadership in providing reliable and scalable carrier-grade solutions to the telecommunications market. Announced at 3GSM World Congress in Cannes, France, the enhancement can provide up to a 36% increase in price/performance.
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| SGI delivers 4 Gigabit Fibre Channel storage array |
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To address soaring demand from users for more powerful storage solutions, Silicon Graphics has unveiled the SGI InfiniteStorage TP9700 RAID storage array. This marks the industry's first Fibre Channel storage array equipped with a 4Gb/second (gigabit per second) Fibre Channel interface, doubling the performance of SGI's previous offerings. The increased performance of the TP9700 means that users need far less infrastructure - adapters, cabling, switch ports, etc - to access and manage their storage. Bottom line, this results in lower cost of ownership and far simpler configurations to manage.
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| Storage-centric resellers join SGI Channel Programme |
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SGI InfiniteStorage solutions are taking front and centre stage in a newly expanded SGI Channel Programme. A special emphasis has been placed on recruiting new storage-centric value-added resellers (VARs) whose primary business is the supply and integration of data storage solutions and services. Recently SGI has signed reseller agreements with twelve storage-dedicated Solution Providers that join a global community representing SGI InfiniteStorage to customers around the world.
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| Engenio takes high performance computing to another level |
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Engenio Information Technologies Inc., a global provider of innovative and highly scalable modular storage systems for the open enterprise, has released its 6998 Fibre Channel controller based on the company's sixth generation architecture. This latest controller based on Engenio's new XBB architecture provides 4 Gb/s (gigabit per second) Fibre Channel connectivity - double the performance of its predecessor - and follows in the footsteps of the industry's first Fibre Channel controller introduced by Engenio in 1995.
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| Bull enhances the entry-level of its Escala AIX/Power 5 technology-based servers |
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Bull extends its Escala AIX/POWER5 processor-based server offer with the announcement of the Escala PL250R-L model, an entry-level server running AIX 5.2 and 5.3. This model, in a compact 2U format, combines the strength of the new generation of POWER 5 RISC processors, flexibility through on-demand usage, advanced functionalities such as resource virtualization through AIX/Power micro partitioning and I/O and network virtualization. These functionalities allow the co-hosting or the straightforward consolidation of many applications per server, all at a very competitive price: less than 5400 euro, 3-year guaranty included.
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| Bull announces Escala Essentials, the turnkey Unix infrastructure solutions, based on the Escala AIX Power 5 servers |
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Bull launches 'Escala Essentials': turnkey infrastructure solutions that rely on Escala AIX Power5 servers. Enterprises that made the Unix choice for their server infrastructures will benefit from the best open solutions on the market for critical features such as high availability, back-up and networked storage. Fully pre-tested and validated by Bull's Competence Centres, these solutions provide a quick implementation warranty.
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| February 21 submission deadline for 20th anniversary of International Supercomputer Conference approaches |
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ISC2005, the International Supercomputer Conference which celebrates its 20th year in 2005, is seeking paper submissions with the selected authors to be awarded the ISC Award sponsored by IBM. The deadline for submissions is Monday, February 21, 2005.
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| Dolphin Interconnect has been appointed as an authorized partner for MySQL |
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Dolphin Interconnect, a provider of high-speed interconnects based on the Scalable Coherent Interface (SCI), has been appointed an Authorized Partner for MySQL, the highly popular open source database.
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| ClusterVision delivers powerful supercomputer cluster to NUMECA International |
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ClusterVision, specialist in Linux supercomputer clusters, has completed the installation of a compute cluster for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software specialist NUMECA. The 130 Intel Xeon processor cluster was installed last week at NUMECA's corporate headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
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| Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory selects Panasas to support world's fifth largest supercomputer |
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Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), a premier applied science laboratory and part of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), has selected the Panasas ActiveScale Storage Cluster. A Panasas solution using the NFS protocol has been deployed to support several high-performance supercomputers as part of the Livermore Computing program, including Thunder, the number five supercomputer in the world.
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| Voltaire contributes iSER - iSCSI RDMA - storage protocol sources to the Linux community |
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Voltaire, specialized in interconnect solutions for high performance Grid computing, has contributed its iSER (iSCSI RDMA) protocol sources to the Linux community. The move underscores Voltaire's commitment to drive adoption of open InfiniBand-based solutions for server, network and storage networking and virtualization in enterprise Grid and high performance computing applications.
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| Re-configurable Computing with FPGAs - Is it promised Jerusalem? |
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The UK National HPC service at the University of Manchester in collaboration with the Ohio Supercomputer Centre hosted a technical symposium, sponsored by Cray and SGI, on re-configurable computing with Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), 21-22 February 2005. The symposium provided the opportunity for exchanging ideas and experiences in exploring possibilities of using re-configurable computing to accelerate software applications. Several of the speakers described their early experiences with FPGAs and technical experts from vendors and researchers in the field were at hand to explain how to use FPGAs to meet high application performance goals. Many of the speakers enthused about this new area of computing claiming plenty of promise. (Chris Lazou)
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| HPC Projects in Germany |
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There are three "Höchstleistungszentren" in Germany, the John von Neumann Institute for Computing, Research Center Jülich and DESY, Leibnizrechenzentrum, LRZ, in Munich and HLRS in Stuttgart. The computing time for all the projects that run on these computers is granted according to peer reviews of their project proposals. Regularly the scientists have to present their results in workshops. All the three centres have publishes books of the symposia and workshops. There one can look at the scientific focus of the German HPC projects on the Höchstleistungsrechenzentren.
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| Sun SunFire 2-way and 4-way servers use PathScale Compiler Suite to set new world records for performance |
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PathScale, developer of innovative software and hardware solutions to accelerate the performance and efficiency of Linux clusters and developer of the award-winning EKOPath Compiler Suite, has joined Sun Microsystems in announcing the results of groundbreaking standardized performance tests. These announcements were made this week at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in Boston, where the PathScale compiler suite is being exhibited in the Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) booth.
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| 17th Forum ORAP calls for participation |
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The 17th Forum ORAP will be organised Thursday, 10 March 2005 at the INRIA site in Rocquencourt, Le Chesnay, France. The themes addressed will be algorithms for large applications and visualization of large data volumes. Participation is free of charge but registration is requested.
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| DataDirect will provide 1 petabyte of networked storage for Europe's fastest supercomputer at CEA, awarded by Bull |
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DataDirect Networks, specialized in high performance storage, has been awarded the contract by Bull to provide the storage for the French CEA Atomic Energy Commission (Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique). DataDirect Network's recently introduced S2A9500, the world's fastest Fibre Channel-4 storage system, will connect to a cluster of Bull NovaScale SMP servers and power "Tera10", the number one supercomputer in Europe and one of the fastest supercomputers worldwide.
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| Japan's Institute for Solid State Physics improves performance by 20 times with new 1280-processor SGI system |
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SGI Japan Ltd. will deliver its latest high-end Linux server, SGI Altix 3700 Bx2, to the Institute for Solid State Physics (ISSP) in Japan as the new supercomputing system for the institute.
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| Cray reports 2004 financial results and receives large order from Oak Ridge National Laboratory |
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Cray Inc. has reported financial results for the quarter and year ended December 31, 2004. Revenue for the full-year 2004 was $148.9 million, compared to $237.0 million for 2003. GAAP operating loss for the year was ($144.3) million, compared to operating income of $19.1 million for the prior year. GAAP operating loss for 2004 includes $27.0 million of unusual items associated primarily with restructuring, write-down of excess inventory, and adjustments recognized on a fixed-price contract. Non-GAAP operating loss, which includes unusual items but excludes OctigaBay acquisition-related charges of $55.6 million, was ($88.8) million for the year.
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| OptimaNumerics delivers higher performance on IBM eServer OpenPower |
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OptimaNumerics, specialized in high performance technical and scientific computing software, has launched OptimaNumerics Libraries for IBM eServer OpenPower system, providing customers with the highest performance numerical software tools to enable efficient technical and scientific computations. OptimaNumerics is a Qubis Ltd backed company.
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| Hitachi selects Topspin for Blade server solutions |
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Topspin Communications has been selected by Hitachi Ltd. to provide its Infiniband-based server switching products as part of Hitachi's BladeSymphony blade server product line. The combined solution will deliver a compelling return-on-investment (ROI) for Hitachi customers.
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| Sun Microsystems and EDS extend strategic partnership |
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Sun Microsystems and EDS are in exclusive negotiations on an eight-year services agreement, whereby EDS will transform the operations of Sun's data centres to the EDS Agile Enterprise Platform, its next-generation global delivery system. Financial details of the proposed transaction were not disclosed.
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| Air Force's Maui Center selects Cray XD1 supercomputer to boost space surveillance and image processing capabilities |
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The Maui High Performance Computing Center (MHPCC), a U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate facility, has chosen a Cray XD1 supercomputer to increase the centre's capabilities in space surveillance and image processing. This marks the first time MHPCC has acquired a supercomputing system from Cray. This order is part of a multi-order award with an aggregate value of over $23 million that Cray has received from the Department of Defense (DoD) High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP).
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| Cray to establish Supercomputing Center of Excellence at Oak Ridge National Laboratory |
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Cray will establish a supercomputing center of excellence at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The Cray Supercomputing Center of Excellence will support the DOE's plans to build the world's most powerful supercomputer for open (non-classified) scientific research at ORNL.
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| RWTH Aachen University Center for Computing and Communication organises Workshop on HPC |
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The RWTH Aachen University Center for Computing and Communication will organise its annual workshop on HPC on its Sun Fire SMP Cluster from March 14 till 18, 2005. The workshop will focus on serial programme tuning, as well as tuning shared and distributed memory parallel applications using automatic parallelization, OpenMP respectively MPI on Sun UltrasSPARC IV- and Opteron-based servers.
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| SGI offers Scali software with Altix cluster solutions |
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Software solutions from Scali, an expert in high-performance clustering solutions, will be a featured option for the new SGI Altix 1350 and SGI Altix Hybrid Cluster. With Scali Manage software running on Altix clusters, customers can simplify their cluster management and monitoring, even those that exist in heterogeneous computing environments and run a wide range of applications.
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| National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences picks Cray XD1 supercomputer for protein structure analysis |
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The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health, will use a Cray XD1 supercomputer for advanced research in protein structure analysis and molecular modelling. The Cray XD1 system was procured from GMRI, utilizing their NASA/SEWP contract.
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| HP scientists create new computing breakthrough at molecular scale |
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HP researchers have proven that a technology they invented could replace the transistor - the fundamental building block of computers for the last half century - leading to a new way to construct computers in the future. In a paper published in today'sJournal of Applied Physics, three members of HP Labs' Quantum Science Research (QSR) group propose and demonstrate a "crossbar latch," which provides the signal restoration and inversion required for general computing without the need for transistors. The technology could result in computers that are thousands of times more powerful than those that exist today.
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| IBM announces new generation of Faculty Awards for Innovation |
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In support of the US National Innovation Initiative, IBM has announced new faculty awards to support university researchers focused on specific areas of innovation including Autonomic Computing, Apache Derby, Eclipse and Linux on POWER.
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| Dot Hill announces preliminary financial results |
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Dot Hill Systems has announced preliminary financial results for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2004. The company expects to report an increase in net revenue to $65.5 million for the fourth quarter of 2004, compared to $57.5 million for the fourth quarter of 2003, and $57.0 million for the third quarter of 2004.
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| Solaris 10 operating system available for free on Sun's Web site |
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The Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) is available for customers to download and deploy, free of charge from Sun's Web site. Customers will benefit from increased performance as demonstrated through world-record benchmarks, affordable new service and support models and 400 new ISVs supporting Solaris 10. Solaris 10 is a vendor-neutral operating system that is available on more than 340 different hardware platforms from vendors as diverse as Dell, Fujitsu, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, IBM and HP.
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| Fujitsu Siemens Computers launching powerful new BS2000/OSD mainframe |
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At next month's CeBIT, Fujitsu Siemens Computers will present its new SX150 business server, a model that outperforms its predecessors by around 40 percent. The system, which is based on SPARC64 V processor technology and available immediately, supports different operating systems and applications running in parallel under BS2000/OSD and Solaris in separate hardware partitions. This increases the flexibility of the Dynamic Data Center and allows new web-oriented applications, for example, to be linked to mainframe applications. Such mainframe features should appeal in particular to mid-tier enterprises looking to consolidate their servers, integrate their business critical applications into e-business solutions, or simply gain more capacity.
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| Fujitsu Siemens Computers achieves world record with PRIMERGY server blade BX660 in the Exchange MMB3 Benchmark |
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Fujitsu Siemens Computers has the power of its PRIMERGY BX660 server blade worldwide by setting a new record in the MAPI Messaging Benchmark (MMB3). On January 21, 2005, it achieved the outstanding result of 9500 MMB3 users in the single server category, the best mark for all published 4-way servers,
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| SGI brings advantages of Altix to mid-range clusters |
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Responding to growing demand for high-performance clusters that are cost-effective and easy to administer, Silicon Graphics has unveiled enhancements to its award-winning mid-range server line. Delivering the unparalleled price/performance and ease of use of SGI Altix server for a broad range of cluster implementations, the new SGI Altix 1350 and SGI Altix Hybrid Cluster bring exceptional flexibility and scalability to any computing environment.
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| New PRIMERGY TX300 S2 smashes Exchange Server 2003 | |