| News digest February 2006 |
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| Industry
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HPCN industry |
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| PSC - 20 Years of Supercomputing in Pittsburgh |
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Twenty years ago, January 17, 1986, the US National Science Board approved funding for the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. As the fifth supercomputing centre to be approved through a National Science Foundation initiative, PSC came into the supercomputing world running to catch up. Twenty years later, the original five are three, and PSC is solidly established as one of the world's leading centres in implementing new high-performance computing technologies as productive tools for science and engineering research.
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| Cray selected by UK's AWE to provide one of world's largest supercomputers |
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Cray has won the competition to provide the United Kingdom's Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) plc with one of the world's most powerful supercomputers, a Cray XT3 system with peak performance of over 40 Tflop/s.
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| New IBM cluster entered in production January 9 |
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NERSC did open its newest high performance computing system, an IBM cluster with 888 processors for parallel computing, for production use on Monday, January 9, 2006. During the acceptance testing, users reported that codes ran from 3 to 10 times faster on the new cluster, Bassi, than on NERSC's other IBM supercomputer, Seaborg, leading one tester to call the system the "best machine I have seen".
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| Scali addresses growing demand for cluster lifecycle management in the datacentre |
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Scali has introduced an updated version of its Scali Manage product. Scali Manage 5 is focused on providing the optimized functionality needed to efficiently provision and manage pools of clusters and servers in demanding enterprise computing environments.
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| DNA self-assembly used to mass-produce patterned nanostructures |
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Duke University scientists have used the self-assembling properties of DNA to mass-produce nanometer-scale structures in the shape of a 4x4 grids, on which patterns of molecules can be specified. They said the achievement represents a step toward mass-producing electronic or optical circuits at a scale 10 times smaller than the smallest circuits now being manufactured.
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| HP and Hitachi to collaborate on security and privacy research |
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Researchers from HP Labs Bristol, United Kingdom, and Princeton, New Jersey, and the Hitachi Systems Development Laboratory will conduct joint work on key security and privacy issues. The HP and Hitachi research collaboration will focus on two primary themes: authenticating users and devices to improve security inside networks and the use of digital signatures to guarantee the authenticity of document content.
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| Supercomputing time offered for US Gulf Coast levee restoration |
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US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced three Department of Energy (DOE) initiatives to help the people in the Gulf coast region recover from the hurricanes in 2005, as well as prevent loss of life and damage in the future. During his speech to the Energy Leadership Forum, Bodman announced that DOE will donate 400,000 hours of supercomputing time at its National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NRESC) to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to assist with the rebuilding of levees.
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| Fujitsu Siemens Computers strengthens portfolio with SBS Product Related Services |
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Fujitsu Siemens Computers BV has reached an agreement with shareholders Siemens AG and Fujitsu Limited to acquire the international Product Related Services Division of Siemens Business Services as of April 1, 2006.
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| Mission critical computing customers deploy Itanium solutions |
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Large enterprise and technical computing users including Bull, Fujitsu, Fujitsu Siemens, Hitachi, HP, Intel, NEC, SGI and Unisys, have invested in Itanium solutions to meet their most demanding mission critical computing needs. With 70 of the Fortune 100 corporations utilizing or planning Itanium solutions deployments and Itanium solutions gaining market segment share from IBM Power and Sun Sparc solutions, leading technology users are making strategic investments in open, industry standard Itanium solutions over proprietary alternatives.
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| NERSC supercomputers to analyse hurricane coastal surges and help plan rebuilding in Louisiana and Gulf Coast |
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The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science has allocated 400,000 processor hours of supercomputing time at its National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans District to run a series of simulations of hurricane protection projects within coastal Louisiana.
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| IBM supercomputer "Champions” research at UT Austin's Texas Advanced Computer Center |
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The Texas Advanced Computer Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin will add a powerful new IBM supercomputer, named "Champion", to its recently expanded machine room for research into a diverse range of scientific disciplines from biomedicine to climatology.
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| World Record for Fujitsu Siemens Computers' PRIMEQUEST |
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Fujitsu Siemens Computers' high-end model of the PRIMEQUEST server line, PRIMEQUEST 480, has achieved a new world record for servers up to 32 cores in the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) Java Business Benchmark 2005 (SPECjbb2005), with performance of 322,719 business operations per second.
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| Sun Java Enterprise System powers NOC to monitor critical voice, video and data for FAA's new nationwide communications network |
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Sun Microsystems Inc. has signed an alliance with Harris Corporation which has enabled the successful deployment of a Sun-based IT system for the US Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Telecommunications Infrastructure (FTI) Network Operations Center (NOC).
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| Cray announces selected preliminary 2005 results and updates 2006 outlook |
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Cray Inc. has announced selected preliminary results for the year 2005 and provided additional information about 2006. Earlier on, the company indicated that total estimated 2005 revenue would be in the range of $195 million. Based on preliminary results, total revenue is now expected to be about $199 million.
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| TACC's ACES Visualization Laboratory gains high-end Dell workstations |
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The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin has two new Delle high-end visualization workstations at the centre's ACES Visualization Laboratory that will help the lab become a multi-user, multi-purpose environment. The lab in the Applied Computational Engineering and Sciences (ACES) building on the university’s main campus is a world-class facility that provides access to very high-end resources, particularly large-scale display systems. The facility is used by researchers from every major scientific discipline represented at the University of Texas at Austin.
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| NEC Itanium2 based Express5800 server achieves world's best 8-processor Intel TPC-C benchmark performance |
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NEC Corporation's Intel Itanium2 processor-based server, Express5800/1160Xe, has achieved the world's best TPC-C benchmark performance on an 8-processor IA server platform. The 254,471 transactions per minute (tpmC) was accomplished by using Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS4 for Itanium Processors Family, Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition and BEA Tuxedo 8.1. This also represents the best TPC-C benchmark performance on an 8-processor Linux server platform.
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| Interactive Supercomputing secures VC funding |
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Interactive Supercomputing Inc. (ISC) has secured a $4.5 million Series-A investment. Flagship Ventures led the round, joined by Rock Maple Ventures and CommonAngels, a network of private investors and limited partners.
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| DataDirect qualifies S2A product line with ONStor Bobcat NAS gateways for scalable, high-performance enterprise storage |
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DataDirect Networks Inc.'s Silicon Storage Appliance (S2A) products have been certified for use with ONStor's 2280 NAS gateways, providing customers with a best-of-breed scalable storage solution to meet the most demanding enterprise storage requirements.
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| Alberta and HP collaboarate on information and communications technology |
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A memorandum of understanding signed between the Alberta government in Canada and HP set the stage for the development of joint research projects on advanced computing and data centre management, nanotechnology and advanced videoconferencing technology. The proposed projects include the establishment of a new facility at the University of Calgary for work on advanced data centre operation, joint research with the National Institute for Nanotechnology to develop tiny sensors to improve medical and environmental diagnostics, and work with the University of Alberta to advance videoconferencing technology.
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| HP teams with Symas to deliver open source directory across HP server platforms |
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HP has signed an agreement with Symas Corporation to expand its certification and services for an open source directory across all HP industry-standard platforms.
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| ADNOC acquires latest high-performance computer from SGI for oil reservoir studies |
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The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has acquired an SGI Altix BX2 system high-performance computing (HPC) system for oil reservoir studies. The machine, based on SGI's global shared-memory system architecture, offers up to four times greater performance compared to the existing system at ADNOC and was installed in September.
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| Intransa capitalizes on 2005 momentum in expanding IP SAN market |
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Intransa, a global innovator of network-centric, IP storage solutions, has achieved strong, accelerated adoption of Intransa IP systems and terabytes shipped in 2005. Intransa's 2005 net revenues grew 100 percent year-over-year from 2004, with more than 1.2 petabytes shipped to customers worldwide.
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| "Most Innovative Server" awarded to the Sun Fire T2000 server |
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The Sun Fire T2000 server has won the "Most Innovative Server" award in the Systems category in InfoWorld's 2006 Technology of the Year honours. The Sun Fire T2000 with unique CoolThreads technology is the industry's first eight core, 32-thread processor that packs the performance of a rack of servers onto a single chip.
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| IBM expands BladeCenter solutions for retail industry |
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IBM has launched new solutions based on IBM's BladeCenter platform to help retail customers manage remote store environments more economically and efficiently. IBM's Systems Solutions for Retail Stores helps optimize technology infrastructure by consolidating all in-store servers, storage, networking and applications in a single physical package with a common management infrastructure.
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| Oracle sets new world record with SAP Business Information Warehouse Standard Application two-tier benchmark on Fujitsu Siemens Computers PRIMEPOWER |
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Oracle has achieved a world record SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW) Standard Application Two-tier Benchmark result, surpassing IBM DB2’s best result and underscoring the superior query processing power of Oracle Database 10g running a variety of enterprise applications.
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| Asigra delivers remote data back-up to drilling company based throughout Europe and Atlantic Ocean |
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SecurStore, an Icelandic storage services provider, is providing Jardboranir HF (Iceland Drilling Company Ltd), a global drilling company, with Asigra's agentless distributed back-up and recovery software, Televaulting. Iceland Drilling Company uses SecurStore IP Backup, SecurStore's managed back-up and recovery service, which deploys Asigra's Televaulting software across its three main rigs located in the Azores and Iceland and also the headquarters in Reykjavik, Iceland.
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| emgs deploys IBRIX Fusion Parallel File System to accelerate oil and gas exploration services |
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Electromagnetic Geoservices AS (emgs), the Seabed Logging Company, has implemented the IBRIX Fusion Parallel File System, an enterprise-class fully-integrated single namespace software suite, for generating more sophisticated oil and gas analyses and surveys and accelerating its delivery to oil and gas customers worldwide.
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| Mercury Computer Systems introduces the first rugged Cell BE processor-based computer - the PowerBlock 200 |
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Mercury Computer Systems Inc. has introduced the PowerBlock 200 - the third member of its Cell Broadband Engine (BE) processor-based family of hardware products, and the first rugged device designed with the Cell BE processor.
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| Java CoG Kit documentation now entirely maintained |
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The Java CoG Kit documentation is now entirely maintained on the Java CoG Kit Team's Wiki.
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| HP boosts Open Source Alliance with JBoss on Linux and HP-UX 11i platforms |
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HP has extended its agreement with JBoss to offer an expanded portfolio of open source solutions and services that customers can deploy within their existing data centres.
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| Devon IT announces availability of thin client terminals with NoMachine NX client |
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Devon IT, a provider of server-centric computing products and services, has made available NoMachine NX Client on NTA Thin Client terminals. This new offering, the latest addition to its line of thin client terminals, maximizes the capabilities of customers using NoMachine remote access solutions.
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| IBRIX Fusion parallel file system helps maximize performance of Alexa web wearch platform |
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IBRIX announced that Alexa Internet, a subsidiary of Amazon.com has implemented the IBRIX Fusion Parallel File System, an enterprise-class, software-based scalable file serving solution for its Alexa Web Search Platform.
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| European ITtechnology rolls into North American market |
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EMC Corporation, specialized in information management and storage, is now offering the Fujitsu Siemens Computers' CentricStor virtual tape appliance in the USA and Canada as part of the EMC Select Programme. This leading virtual tape technology, formerly only distributed in EMEA, will now be available in North America - directly through EMC and its sales partners.
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| SGI offers Interactive Parallel Computing Platform |
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Silicon Graphics has signed a reseller agreement with Interactive Supercomputing (ISC) to resell and support the company's Star-P technical computing software under the SGI label.
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| Industry
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The Grid |
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| Handling complexity - Peter Sloot introduces dr. hc. Carl Kesselman |
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Prof. Peter Sloot was honory promoter of Carl Kesselman on January 9, in Amsterdam. In presenting the new "dr.", Peter Sloot gave an overview of the importance of the work of Carl Kesselman, and how it fits in today's efforts to tackle complexity.
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| Building a Virtual Organisation with Grid technology takes a lot of telephone calls |
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At Janury 9th, Carl Kesselman became honory doctor at the University of Amsterdam, because of his achievements in Grid computing. Within the aula, one of the oldest buildings of the University of Amsterdam, Kesselman's inauguration was part of the 374th Dies Natalis (birth day) of the university, a traditional festivity, with musicians of the renowed Concertgebouw Orkest, a presentation from the Dean, with a lot of references to the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, and professors dressed up in toga. Prof. Peter Sloot had the honour to pronounce the formula with which Carl Kesselman became doctor, hand him his "Bull" and decorate him with the traditional kappa. Next day, Carl Kesselman was back to work again, giving a Grid masterclass for the Dutch Gridforum society and giving an interview to EnterTheGrid - Primeur magazine. We talked to him about his theoretical work on Grid computing, especially Virtual Organisations, the implementation in Globus, standards and his connection to The Netherlands.
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| Book review - Grid computing, The savvy manager's guide |
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Writing a book about a new technology for managers is not easy. You have to be enthousiastic about the technology, but not too enthousiastic, otherwise they do not believe you. You have to explain the technology, but not use too technical terms. You have to indicate the possible business opportunities, but not raise unrealistic expectations. Most early books on Grid technology failed one way or the other. That's why I was pleased to read the book "Grid computing, The savvy manager's guide". Pawel Plasczak and Richard Weller present a nice overview of the state-of-the-art in Grid computing in relation to business. With one author from Poland, and the other from the United States, they also succeed in getting a balance between US and European developments and contributions to Grid computing.
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| Networking computers to help combat disease |
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Subtropical diseases lay waste to millions of people each year. In the quest to find a cure scientists are using Grid computing, the major driving force for new approaches towards collaborative large-scale science, to discover new drugs and better understand the diseases. Currently drug discovery seeks compounds that can inhibit or kill invading parasites and infections, but there are potentially millions of candidate compounds. It can take 10 years to discover a drug and another 10 to get it approved. Grid technology, where the resources of many computers in a network are applied to a single problem at the same time, however, can reduce candidate compounds from millions to thousands or even hundreds, isolating the most promising candidates and speeding up the discovery process.
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| Mining biotech's data mother lode |
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A EU-sponsored project has developed a suite of tools that will enable biotech companies to mine through vast quantities of data created by modern life-science labs to find the nuggets of genetic gold that lie within. The BioGrid project brought together six partners from the UK, Germany, Cyprus and The Netherlands to address one of the key problems facing the life sciences today.
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| SDSC and NCSA provide combined TeraGrid resources |
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Starting in 2006, users requesting high-performance computing resources from the US National Science Foundation will have seamless access to all computational resources at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) within the TeraGrid environment.
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| Alchemi 1.0: A .NET-based Enterprise Grid Framework released |
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Alchemi is an "open source" software framework that allows you to painlessly aggregate the computing power of networked machines into a virtual supercomputer (computational grid) and to develop applications to run on enterprise grids. It has been developed at the GRIDS Laboratory within the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Melbourne, as part of the Gridbus project.
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| SARA doubles capacity of Dutch National Compute Cluster |
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SARA - in collaboration with Dell is extending of the National Compute Cluster in the SARA data center in Almere. This extension is expected to be operational by the end of March 2006. With the extension, the total computing capacity of the cluster will increase to a theoretical peak performance of more than 8.5 Tflop/s. The National Compute Cluster is an important addition to the nationally available supercomputing capacity. SARA is responsible for the housing and system management of the cluster, and gives support to the users of the system.
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