SC|05, the premier international conference on high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis, will make public a special video that explores the vital influence of supercomputing in solving the grand challenges of social and commercial problems affecting the quality of life for people throughout the world.

At its 8th annual business and technology conference, Citrix iForum Global 2005, Citrix Systems has launched its first 64-bit solution for application virtualization: Citrix Presentation Server 4.0 for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition.

Fujitsu Siemens Computers has become member of the Itanium Solutions Alliance (ISA). Founded to boost the availability of Itanium solutions, ISA will facilitate the delivery of a suite of enabling programmes targeted at enterprise and technical computing developers. For customers, this will mean faster time-to-implementation of the applications most critical to their new business needs. Now customers can reap the benefits of industry standard technology providing lower cost, higher levels of system performance and application integration as well as a broader choice of hardware and software vendors committed to the Itanium architecture.

SC|05, the premier international conference on high performance computing, networking and storage, will convene November 12-18, 2005 in Seattle, Washington, USA. Under the theme, "Gateway to Discovery", SC|05 will showcase how high performance computing, networking, storage and analytics lead to advances in research, education and commerce. More than 8000 people are expected to attend SC|05.

Fujitsu Siemens Computers has announced a major enhancement to the Dynamic Data Center: the PRIMERGY Advanced Blade Ecosystem. This industry-leading server architecture, based on the PRIMERGY BX630 with AMD Opteron processors, enables two-way blade servers to connect to become a physical four-way blade server.

HP has signed a definitive agreement to acquire RLX Technologies Inc., a pioneer of server blade management technologies. Headquartered in Spring, Texas, RLX has 36 employees and approximately 200 customers worldwide. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

HP has made new additions to its x86 server line-up that are powered by Intel's latest dual-core technology - the Intel Xeon processor DP. Using the processors, the new HP ProLiant servers can boost certain enterprise application performance by as much as 44 percent.

Cray and DSPlogic simplify the process of accelerating high-performance computing (HPC) applications using the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) capabilities of the Cray XD1 supercomputer. DSPlogic's Rapid Reconfigurable Development Kit includes a development environment that provides a fast and easy way for scientists and programmers to take advantage of the reconfigurable computing features of the Cray XD1 supercomputer without learning a new programming language or becoming experts in FPGA technology.

Users of Grid computing worldwide took a step closer to accessing computers and information in 50 countries and regions, from Canada to China, Portugal to Pakistan, when the International Grid Trust Federation (IGTF) was established last week during the 15th Global Grid Forum (GGF) in Boston. The IGTF brings together Grid organisations representing Asia, the Americas and Europe that are working towards allowing scientific researchers to identify themselves to any Grid resource in the world with just a single on-line identity.

Indiana University (IU) has received a $1.72 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to enhance its existing cyberinfrastructure. Cyberinfrastructure is high-performance computers, data storage systems, and advanced instruments both local, national and international all connected via high-speed networks and used extensively by IU researchers. The grant provides for the addition of substantial new infrastructure which will provide short-term storage for massive amounts of data that require analysis by IU's supercomputers.

WestGrid has successfully deployed the SGI InfiniteStorage Shared File System CXFS in conjunction with the YottaYotta NetStorager System across a distance of over 1000 kilometers. WestGrid (Western Canada Research Grid) is a $50-million project to operate Grid-enabled high performance computing and collaboration infrastructure at institutions in Alberta and British Columbia. Its resources are provided at no cost to researchers across Canada. Westgrid selected SGI and YottaYotta to deliver remote visualization and geographic data Grid services to Simon Fraser University (SFU) and the University of Alberta (UofA).

A roadmap which suggests how agent-based computing could develop over the next decade will be launched this month. The Agentlink III Roadmap, which has been compiled by Professor Michael Luck at the School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton, will be launched at ATC, the Agent Technology Conference in Stockholm, on Tuesday 18 October 2005. The document was developed as a result of an extensive 18-month consultation with experts in agent technology, including the 192 members of Agentlink III and experts in the Americas, Japan and Australasia.

Oil companies could soon harness the power of distant supercomputers to tackle problems such as where to place equipment and how to clean up oil spills. For decades, the industry has used computers to maximize profit and minimize environmental impact, explained Tahsin Kurc, assistant professor of biomedical informatics at Ohio State University.

Having doubled its staff numbers this year and now listing seven of the world’s leading investment banks as clients, Codefarm continues to expand organically and is attracting top postgraduate software specialists. From its new headquarters in Brighton, Codefarm sees a bright future as its evolutionary computing solutions to financial optimization problems enable investment banks to increase their returns.

Higo Bank and Unicredit are the newest businesses to deploy Grid computing solutions based on IBM technology. In addition to the financial institutions, IBM announced an expansion of the IBM Grid and Grow offering, with participation by SAS and Absoft Corporation, as well as the introduction of a new Ready for Grid Computing programme.

SAS has launched new Grid computing capabilities to its SAS9 enterprise intelligence software. This new automated Grid management capability gives Grid computing users greater flexibility, scalability and reliability for managing applications across an enterprise.

SAS has introduced new features of SAS Enterprise ETL Server that increase the productivity and add flexibility to extraction, transformation and load (ETL) processes.

In response to positive feedback from its first End User Forum held last week in Santa Clara, California, the Enterprise Grid Alliance has added an Atlanta event. To be held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Ravinia on Tuesday, November 8, the forum is designed to provide insight on the potential and power of enterprise Grid computing and will consist of interactive discussions on real world Grid deployments, the status of industry standards and predictions for the future of the market.

It only turns 5 years old this month, but the Indiana University (IU) Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics (CGB) has already brought to IU Bloomington $21 million for research, helped map two genomes and added about 40 employees to its burgeoning staff.

The OpenMP group will organise a contest to encourage the use of OpenMP for scalable high-performance computing. The basis of the contest is the DARPA HPCS Scalable Synthetic Application #2, Graph Theory (SSCA2).