|
|
|
|
|
advertisement
August 1999
Primeur is a monthly Virtual Magazine on High Performance Computing
and
Networking in Europe. It is produced by an editorial
team
composed of professionals in publishing and HPCN. You can put the editorial
team to
work as well. Read about our services and
advertising
opportunities
and find out about the friendly
rates
.
advertisement
Breaking news
- just a click away:
From TOP500 to petaflops -
all has been
discussed at Supercomputer '99
Two Primeur issues have been published
with the
latest HPCN news from the Mannheim Supercomputer Seminar.
Read the
latest
news on the TOP500, an update on all HPC vendors, "Building a
Petaflop
computer is not that difficult" a lecture by Steven Wallach,
and "The new
role of supercomputing centers" a lecture by Horst Simon and
the latest
news on Tera, SUN, HP and the other supercomputing vendors.
June 10, 1999 issue
June 12, 1999 issue
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Media and visualisation
|
|
|
Linux
|
|
|
HPCN industry
|
|
|
Cluster computing
|
|
|
Applications
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
United Kingdom
|
|
|
The Netherlands
|
|
|
Russia
|
|
|
Ireland
|
|
|
Germany
|
|
|
France
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Heavy investments in HPC in Brazil
|
|
The Brazilian national aerospace institute Inpe spent euro 22 million to
acquire new chips from Japan that will be used to improve Brazil's
weather forecast services until June, 2000. Meanwhile,
Brazilan company Elebra has
finished developing a supercomputer that will equip 11 regional weather
forecast centers spread throughout the country in
2 years time.
|
| Pakistan to benefit from new US supercomputer export rules
|
|
|
The United States has
relaxed export controls on supercomputers for many countries, including
Pakistan.
However, restrictions on computer exports for military use will stay.
Pakistan is placed on the Tier-3 list, which includes countries with
the highest risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons.
For the countries on the list, the threshold would rise to 12,300
million theoretical operations per second (MTOPS) from 7,000 civilian
end-users and to 6,000 MTOPS from 2,000 for military end-users.
|
| NEC supercomputer to Brazil
|
|
|
According to the Brazilan newspaper Gazeta Mercantil
NEC has signed a contract with the Brazilian space institute Inpe to
supply it with a supercomputer worth euro 22 million to be used in
meteorogical studies and wheater reports.The contract
funding was
secured by the Japanese Eximbank.
|
| US Navy supers increased for saver Kosovo actions
|
|
|
The
U.S. Navy has significantly increased the size of its Cray T3E supercomputer from 700 to 816 processors and upgraded its SGI
Origin
2000 supercomputers into one
256-processor system to improve the
safety and effectiveness of U.S. ships and aircraft in such military campaigns
as the recent operations in Kosovo, Yugoslavia.
|
| Compaq demonstrated 256 Alpha processor ASCI
Pathforward machine with QSW switching
|
|
|
Compaq has exceeded its ASCI
(Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative) PathForward phase one goals by
successfully completing the first of three " supercomputers-from-commodity-parts" demonstrations. Compaq
demonstrated its largest and fastest supercomputer to date. Using 128 dual processor AlphaServer DS20 systems, Tru64 Unix and Quadrics switch technology, the
Alpha-based supercomputer surpassed PathForward goals for memory bandwidth,
process latency, and performance scaling across all 256 processors.
|
| Los Alamos to close security gap within a year
|
|
|
As "Associated Press" reports, a Los Alamos national laboratory insider determined
to steal secrets still could copy files off the lab's classified
computers onto a floppy disk and walk out, said the Energy
Department's new security czar.
Los Alamos is gradually tightening the security of its
classified network of roughly 2,000 personal computers,
workstations, and supercomputers.
|
| University of Philippines installs supercomputer
|
|
|
The University of the
Philippines
inaugurated a high performance computing facilit
on Tuesday, July 20, 1999 at the UP Computer Center
located in its Diliman campus where the facility is presently housed.
Acquired through donation from Silicon Graphics Singapore,
its estimated value is known to amount to P50 million ( euro 1.3 million).
It is one of the first two supercomputers installed in the Philippines
and UP is the first educational institution to have the facility.
|
| Montana State University acquires SGI systems to study complex biology
|
|
|
Montana State University has installed a 32-processor SGI Origin 2000, an Origin200 and several Octane and O2 visual workstations in their Center for Computational Biology. With the acquisition of the systems, the Center becomes one of the largest computer installations in the state of Montana. Areas of research now benefiting from the new compute power include bioinformatics, analysis and modeling of biological systems, computational chemistry and computational neuroscience.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Strategic alliance between Galeries Lafayette and IBM
|
|
|
Galeries Lafayette through its LaSer division, and IBM have announced a strategic alliance encompassing leading-edge e-business information technology solutions for the retail industry. The underlying 15 year agreement has two parts : the development of retail services offerings in six areas as well as a Strategic Outsourcing contract worth 1.1 billion euro. This is the largest outsourcing contract ever signed in France
|
| Joint Swiss/French supercomputer symposium
|
|
|
Swiss supercomputer society SpeedUp and its French counterpart ORAP, will
have a joint symposium on metacomputing and high-speed networking initatives in Sacley, France, in October.
Presentation language will be French and English.
|
|
|
| First shipment of NEC SX-5 in Europe to Max-Planck Gesellschaft
|
|
|
The first shipment of an NEC SX-5 supercomputer in Europe started on June 29, 1999 to Max-Planck Gesellschaft (MPG). The system is currently being installed at the German Computing Centre Garching of MPG at the Institute for Plasma Physics.
|
| Pallas support for new KAP/Pro and Total View release
|
|
|
Pallas will market the newest versions of the The KAP/Pro Toolset for
OpenMP and of Etnus' Totalview debugger for MPI.
|
| Symposium on Metacomputing and Distributed Computing
|
|
|
Two major German projects in Metacomputing and Distributed Access to Computing Resources will end in 1999 and present the results at a conference in September.
NRW-Metacomputing Initiative is a project funded by the Northrhine-Westphalia Ministry for Schools, Education, Science and Research (MSWWF-NRW) to develop an infrastructure for collaborative use of the country's academic computing resources. Unicore is funded by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) to develop a software infrastructure to provide seamless access to distributed computer resources.
|
| Siemens
takes number one mainframe position in Germany
|
|
|
According to new IDC research Siemens' BS2000 mainframe has for the first time overtaken
IBM to take the number one mainframe positon in Germany. The company also has won its 200th order for its SR2000 small mainframe business server. IDC research for 1998 shows that despite the German mainframe market shrinking slightly by 2.1 per cent, Siemens posted sales growth for the BS2000 and took the number one position with 41 per cent of the market.
|
|
|
| Cell Media and ESIL to sign contracts with Zeddcomm and Boeing
|
|
|
The Irish companies Cell Media and Engineering Solutions International (ESIL) have signed agreements with respectively Zeddcomm, and Boeing. Cell Media, a producer of animations and multimedia for science has entered a co-development partnership with Zeddcomm for
software products and scientific content targeted at high-tech, pharmaceutical and biotechnology markets. Zeddcomm is a Canadian new media, internet and database company. Computer Aided Engineering
ESIL will supply Boeing with Simulation Engineering service.
|
|
|
| ATM multiservice network infrastructure
at the core of Siberian Power industry project
|
|
|
Lack of a reliable telecommunications infrastructure has hindered economic development in the resource-rich Siberian province of Irkutsk-until now.
Irkutskenergo, a leading electric utility in eastern Siberia, is vaulting its communications network into the 21st Century with the assistance of high-performance ATM technology and products from FORE Systems.
|
|
|
| Headquarters Fujitsu Siemens computers possibly in the Netherlands
|
|
|
The new joint venture company, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, will possibly have its headquarters in the Netherlands. According to Siemens the Netherlands make a good chance, because of the tax climate and the strategic location: it is in between Fujitsu's office in London en the Siemens headquarters in Munich. On the 1st of October the joint venture will be official. The companies will make the decision before August 1st. Besides the Netherlands, also UK or Germany are options.
|
|
|
| Presentation of 1999 Wilkinson Prize on 8th of July
|
|
|
The third Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software will be awarded on Thursday 8 July 1999, during ICIAM 99, at the University of Edinburgh. The Argonne National Laboratory, the National Physical Laboratory and the Numerical Algorithms Group award the prize for the development of high quality numerical software. The prize (US$1000) is awarded in honour of the contributions made by James Hardy Wilkinson to numerical software.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Infocast Announces North American Expansion of E-Business Operations
|
|
|
Infocast, an
Application
Service Provider (ASP), today announced as part of Phase One of its North
American expansion the initial purchase of a Sun Enterprise 10000 server
from Sun Microsystems.
InfoCast's first Starfire
server will be
deployed for application service facilities and will reside at InfoCast's
wholly-owned subsidiary, HomeBase Work Solutions of Calgary, Alberta.
|
| Visual Numerics Releases IMSL Fortran 90 Library V4.0
|
|
|
Visual
Numerics
announced the availability of
Version 4.0 of its IMSL Fortran 90 Library for Unix-based workstations
and Windows-based personal computers. This product had previously been
available only for the IBM RS/6000 SP and Cray T3E computing platforms.
|
| ESI's 1999 International users' conferences
|
|
|
The ESI Group, announced its annual international users' conferences. The first AMERI-PAM will take place in Detroit on November 2 and 3. European users will meet in Darmstadt (Germany) on October 7 and 8. Two additional users meetings will be held in Asia, in Seoul (Korea) on November 15 and 17 and in Yokohama (Japan) on November 18 and 19.
|
| Sun's Starfire on top of
Baan high-end benchmark
|
|
|
Sun announced
that it broke two world records for performance in recent benchmark tests of Baan Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software applications. The tests were completed on a
Sun Enterprise 10000
Starfire serve Sun StorEdge
A5200
disk array and marked the third year in a row that the Sun
platform led its competitors in performance of mission-critical Baan applications. IBM also announced a new record for server performance running Baan Company's enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.
Baan has certified that IBM's AS/400e server is able to support 12,000 concurrent users on its BaanERP software,
|
| Japanese DSP institute selects CoSy for DSP compiler research
|
|
|
The Tokyo Institute of Technology
has selected ACE's CoSy compiler development platform to research and develop new DSP optimization strategies. As a result of this important institute's entry into ACE's worldwide R&D network, commercially available versions of CoSy will soon be enriched by some of the most advanced DSP optimizers.
|
| "Fastest Fourier Transform in the West" wins Wilkinson Prize
|
|
|
The third Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software was awarded to Matteo Frigo and Steven Johnson of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The winning entry, FFTW, (the "Fastest Fourier Transform in the West") is a library of C routines for the efficient computation of the Discrete Fourier Transform of real and complex data. The unparalleled efficiency, achieved over a wide range of computer platforms, is achieved by automatically determining the best computational strategy for the particular hardware.
|
| The world's fastest encryption device developed at the Sandia
|
|
|
The world's fastest encryption device, developed at the Sandia National Laboratories should soon be protecting data being transmitted from supercomputers, workstations, telephones and video terminals. It encrypts data at more than 6.7 billion bits per second, 10 times faster than any other known encryptor.
|
| Sequent Delivers high availability for Data Centers
|
|
|
Sequent announced actual high availability numbers often exceeding
even competitor marketing claims with the results of a twelve-month survey of
major NUMA-Q
2000 customer sites around the world. In large non-clustered systems with sixteen or more processors, Sequent found
actual availability to be an impressive 99.987% in a random sample of close to
a hundred systems from May 1998 through April 1999.
|
| Online retailer eToys to buy Sequent Numa servers
|
|
|
eToys, an online toy retailer is upgrading its data center with NUMA-Q servers from Sequent to manage rapid growth and to provide eToys with a new environment for its e-commerce site. Since launching its Web site in October1997, eToys had a spectacular growth, logging in more than 320,000 customers and having the heaviest web site traffic of any e-commerce company during
Christmas 1998.
|
| Quickturn to launch PowerSuite design application
|
|
|
Quickturn, a Cadence Company, introduced PowerSuite, an electronic design automation (EDA) application. PowerSuite provides a Verilog or VHDL functional design verification flow for complex integrated circuits and systems from 5-million to 200-million gates. It is suited to the verification needs of designers creating supercomputers and parallel processing computers and will be available in the third quarter of 1999.
|
|
|
| New
Siemens Primergy
compute node server N70-40
also applicable in hpcLine supercomputer
|
|
|
Siemens announced a new Primergy
compute node server N70-40 that
contains up to 4 Intel Pentium III Xeon processors with up to 4 Gbyte of shared memory. The N70-40 can also be integrated into the Siemens hpcLine with the SCI-interconnection.
|
| OpenMP for Solaris
|
|
|
The KAP/Pro Toolset for OpenMP from Kuck &
Associates,
has been
ported to the Sun Solaris operating environment. The OpenMP
Application Program Interface is a portable, scalable open industry
standard that gives shared-memory parallel programmers a simple and
flexible interface for developing parallel applications for platforms
ranging from desktops to the supercomputers.
|
| Fujitsu's new high-Performance VLIW processor
|
|
|
Fujitsu
introduced a Very Long
Instruction Word (VLIW) processor core technology, the FR-V, developed
to serve a wide range of fast-growing embedded applications in the
digital consumer electronics, communications and automotive markets
worldwide.
The prototype FR-V processors boast record processing speed and low power
consumption. Sample shipments are scheduled to commence
by the end of the year. The processors can deliver 1 Gflop/s of computing power and require only a single watt of power consumption.
|
| ATOLL as a basis for building a parallel computer
|
|
|
Currently, a high-speed switch or NIC interconnect for building a parallel cluster machine, costs more that 1500 euro per board. Ethernet is cheaper, but has much poorer performance. ATOLL changes all that. This German SCI device, costs euro 550 per board, delevering 16 Gb/s performance. You can place your orders today, prototype production is planned for 4Q 1999; volume production starts early next year.
|
|
|
| Quadrics renewed web site at last
|
|
|
Wondered whether QSW (Quadrics) still exists? The company's web site had not been updated,for over two years. But now, the renewed web site is opened. Itialian/English QSW supplies large-scale computer systems with its QM and APEmille product range.
|
| Tera MTA-8 installed at SDSC
|
|
|
Tera Computer Company announced that it has achieved another of its 1999 goals by delivering the first Multithreaded Architecture (MTA) system with eight processors and eight Gbytes of shared memory to the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC).
|
| IBM to acquire Sequent Computer Systems?
|
|
|
According to the Wall Street journal
IBM intends to take over Sequent. Both companies refuse any comments. According to some analysts, IBM is interested in the SMP Numa technology of Sequent, while others point at the close relation between Sequent and Intel.
|
| Data warehouses grow into the Tbyte range
|
|
|
A recently published technology industry report has revealed a surge in demand
for data warehouses. According to a new study by Meta Group, "1999 Data
Warehouse Marketing Trends/Opportunities," businesses of all sizes are
proceeding at full speed to fund and deploy data warehouse applications.
Moreover, Meta Group predicts that, by the end of the year, customer growth
rates will lead to 30 percent of data warehouse sites exceeding one terabyte of data.
|
| IBM and Sequent announce merger agreement
|
|
|
As expected, IBM and Sequent Computer Systems
announced
a merger agreement.
The merger brings together
hardware and software technologies with global presence and partnerships, advancing IBM's thrust in Unix and NT. IBM will pay $18.00 in cash for each outstanding share of Sequent common stock.
The transaction, when completed, is expected to have a total equity value of approximately $810 million.
|
| Oracle Acquires Data Mining Business Of Thinking Machines Corporation
|
|
|
Oracle
acquired
the data mining business from Thinking Machines.
The acquisition will extend Oracle's data warehouse platform and business intelligence solution to include enterprise reporting, ad hoc query, advanced analysis and mining software based on a common Internet platform. The data mining software will also become an integral feature of Oracle's customer relationship management (CRM) suite, which will facilitate the implementation of e-business solutions developed by Oracle customers.
|
| SGI
improves performance on its O2 visual
workstation
|
|
|
SGI
introduced a new 300 MHz QED RM5200
processor for the Silicon Graphics
O2
visual workstation that enables the system to deliver 69 percent better
compute performance and 59 percent better graphics performance than
previous-generation systems.
|
| Apart brings performance analysis experts together
|
|
|
A group of companies, research institutes and universities have formed a working group to discuss Automatic Performance Analysis: Resources and Tools. The group wants to create a forum of tool experts, parallel computer vendors, and software companies to discuss automation of performance analysis tools. At SC'99 a large intenational meeting will be held
|
| Sun announces Solaris Resource Manager 1.1 software
|
|
|
Sun Microsystems, announced the availability of Solaris Resource Manager 1.1 software. The new software, which is now certified by Sun to run with Sun Cluster 2.2software, is designed to help IT managers gain greater control over enterprise systems.
|
| Unix still dominant, but NT expected to gain significant market share
|
|
|
NT will be the key engine for
growth within the worldwide server market.
According to the new Server Market
Review and Forecast, 1998-2003 report from International Data Corporation
(IDC), NT will expand its share of the worldwide server market from 13.8% in
1998 to 30% in 2003.
This significant jump represents a 25% compound annual
growth rate. NT's expected 30% market share translates to $26.9 billion in
end-user spending by 2003.
|
| Commercial 256 processor Origin 2000 available
|
|
|
SGI
introduced a 256-processor version of the
Origin
2000, aimed at both
commercial and industrial markets.
First installation is at NASA Ames.
|
| SGI introduces new midrange server
|
|
|
SGI
newest line of midrange deskside servers is called
the
SG 2100 and
offers customers
interoperability and scalability from two- to
eight-processors.
|
| Jiro storage platform expert group releases draft specification
|
|
|
The goal of the new
Java based
Jiro platform is to enable easy development of flexible applications that allow customers to cohesively manage disparate, networked storage devices, applications and services. The platform, implementing both
Java
and
and Jini technologies,
is an open storage management platform that will enable
to easily manage mixed environments of servers, storage and devices on a network. The Jiro platform enables more flexible and scalable networked storage solutions with technologies that allow multiple vendors' systems to work together as a more cohesive and manageable unit.
|
| Sun expands in Unix servers
|
|
|
Sun Microsystems registered a 33 percent factory revenue growth rate in the total server market, according to first-quarter
results from International Data Corporation (IDC).
IBM grew four percent while Compaq and HP experienced no change in factory revenue. Sun maintained a prominent position in the Unix server market, capturing first place worldwide, with a 28 percent market share in factory revenue and a 30 percent share in shipments.
|
| TotalView
Version 3.9 release supports OpenMP
|
|
|
Dolphin subsidiary Etnus announced the availability of the latest release the TotalView multiprocess and multithread debugger, Version 3.9. This release now supports the OpenMP parallel computing standard, IRIX 6.5 pthreads, and debugging of dynamically loaded libraries.
|
| Bids to host the Euro-Par 2001 conference are
requested
|
|
|
The Euro-Par Steering Committee at its next meeting in September 1999, at Toulouse, will consider bids to host Euro-Par 2001.
Euro-Par is an annual conference merging and replacing three major conference series that evolved with the development of Parallel and Distributed Computing, namely: PARLE, CONPAR and VAPP, all of which started in the early 1980s.
Euro-Par therefore provides the major European venue for the presentation of research results in this area.
|
| Tera's private equity financing in excess of $30 million
|
|
|
A series of transactions of Tera Computer Company resulted in an equity raise in excess of $30 million, the conversion of all outstanding convertible preferred stock and non-supplier debt to common stock and the elimination of the reset adjustment rights held by several institutional investors that purchased shares in 1998 and the first quarter of 1999. The private placement consisted of one share of common stock and one common stock purchase warrant.
|
| Unisys' Aquanta to achieve record performance with xTremeRAID 1100
|
|
|
Unisys Corporation achieved a new transaction processing performance world-record for the Aquanta ES2085R server, an 8-way Intel based NT server. The Aquanta ES2085R achieved 37,757.23 tpmC at a cost of $23.18 per transaction. Nine eXtremeRAID 1100 controllers were used to manage a total of 348 disk drives in the TPC-C-audited configuration.
|
| GENROCO, Ciprico and demonstrated subsystem with peak of 637.5 Mb/s
|
|
|
GENROCO, Ciprico and SGI recently demonstrated the, according to the companies, world's fastest storage subsystem at the University of Minnesota (UMN) and several other undisclosed
locations. The demonstration, which ran SCSI over Schedule Transfer (ST) protocol with a peak data transfer rate of 637.5 Mbytes per second, is the framework for the highest bandwidth storage area network (SAN) ever configured with commercially available products, the three partners claim.
|
|
|
| Linux support for Silicon Graphics 1600SW flat
panel monitor
|
|
|
Users running the Linux operating system can use Silicon Graphic
1600SW flat panel monitor as their display system. Linux
support is now available for owners of the Digital Flat Panel Solution Pack
bundle of the Silicon Graphics 1600SW monitor and the Number Nine
Revolution
IV-FP graphics accelerator.
|
| Compaq Fortan available for Linux Alpha
|
|
|
Compaq announced the availability of a "beta test" version
of the Compaq Fortran compiler for Linux Alpha systems. This Fortran compiler is based on
the same
compiler that it offers today on Tru64
Unix,
OpenVMS
and Windows
95/98/NT.
Compaq Fortran for Linux Alpha
systems supports most of the popular language dialect and extensions that are available on
other Compaq platforms. OpenMP and HPF features are not supported.
|
|
|
| Display of 1.5 GB images (500 million pixels) in about five seconds
|
|
|
PFU
started marketing a
high-definition image browsing system, called
"Gigaview". The software supports the easy configuration of
a high-definition image data archive for storing images, and
enables
high-speed display/browsing.
|
| SGI to power US
air force's new F-16 distributed mission
trainers
|
|
|
SGI has
been selected by Lockheed Martin
to provide
high-performance visual computing equipment to power the world's first
networked, full-mission F-16 simulators. The simulators will allow pilots to
engage in virtual missions with other pilots operating simulators from
locations worldwide.
|
| Intel and SGI
to optimize OpenGL API for
Intel platforms
|
|
|
Intel and SGI
announced plans to work
together to optimize the OpenGL
API for advanced 3D graphics and data
visualization workstations based on Intel architecture.
|
| Veritas to collect data
offshore Canada
|
|
|
Veritas DGC is to begin a major 3D seismic data library programme offshore Nova Scotia. The Veritas Viking I, towing up to eight 6,000-meter streamers, will begin data acquisition on this programme in early July and will span two operating seasons. The company intends to build an extensive library of 3D data to meet the industry's offshore seismic needs.
|
|
|
|
|
| HP and
NEC to team on next-gen Internet Protocol servers for Japan
|
|
|
According to the Electronic Engineering Times,
Hewlett-Packard Co. and NEC Corp. have agreed to collaborate on what the companies are calling the next-generation Internet Protocol (IP) backbone network in Japan.
|
| IBM RS/6000 server sets web record
|
|
|
IBM
announced a new world record for Internet performanceA 12-way S80, running a pre-release version of AIX 4.3.3, the IBM
Unix
operating system, delivered a SPECweb96 benchmark result of 40,161 http-ops./sec., 66 percent better than the former champ.
|
| IETF Sessions available across Europe
|
|
|
Throughout the duration of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in Oslo there will be live audio and video feeds from two simultaneous working group sessions. Each session will be multicast over the Internet in one high-bandwidth 2 Mbit/s, and one low-bandwidth 128 Kbit/s stream. Anyone with access to multicast sessions may follow the IETF and participate without the need of physical presence.
|
| New Fore
Central and Eastern Europe director of sales
|
|
|
High-speed networking company Fore Systems has appointed Martin Böker new Director of Sales, Central and Eastern Europe.
|
