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October 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 .

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This month's news:
Media and visualisation
Linux
HPCN industry
Cluster computing
Applications
United Kingdom
Portugal
Germany
France

DOE enhances capabilities for its researchers
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Federal Energy Technology Center (FETC) is teaming with regional universities and the West Virginia Governor's Office of Technology to develop high-speed access to world-class computer facilities including a high speed data transmission line from northern West Virginia to Pittsburgh. This 155 megabyte/second fiber-optic cable will enable researchers at FETC and WVU to conduct complex modeling and computer simulations studies on PSC's Cray T3E supercomputer .

FlightSafety International purchased 33 Concurrent computers
Simulation Systems Division of FlightSafety International purchased 33 Concurrent Night Hawk computer systems valued at $2.8 million. FlightSafety will use the Night Hawk computers for pilot training simulators. A long-term Concurrent customer, FlightSafety contracted for 25 Night Hawk systems last year.

Power of two Cray supercomputer in F-22 cockpit
One of the keys to the F-22 cockpit electronics is a central ``brain,'' technically called a common integrated processor that is equivalent in computing power to two Cray supercomputers. It integrates many functions and simplifies the way in which information is presented to the pilot. The goal: make identifying an enemy aircraft and firing a missile at the plane as easy as moving a cursor on a computer screen.
US navy buys 512 processor Origin 2000
The U.S. Navy Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center (Fleet Numerical) has signed an $18 million contract with SGI for next-generation ccNUMA supercomputing equipment that will increase its sustained computing power more than ten-fold. Fleet Numerical will use the heightened computing power to greatly improve the accuracy of the weather and ocean forecasts that U.S. forces use to keep troops safe and improve the effectiveness of military and peacekeeping operations. The Center is also vital to protecting the lives and property of civilians: This week, Fleet Numerical is helping forecast the landfall of Hurricane Floyd as it nears the Florida coast. The Center frequently provides key prediction and modeling support to civilian weather-prediction agencies as dangerous weather develops.
Return of the dinosaurs: US governement to support vector supercomputers
The recent successes of the Japanese vector supercomputers, Hitachi, NEC and Fujitsu in sales of high-end vector supercomputers in Europe and the problems of transferring large effecient codes to large parallel machines, have brought a change to the US HPC policy. Untill know, parallel was en vogue and vector processing was old-fashioned. Well, not so any more. The US Administration is now supporting the development of the Cray SV-2 , a classic multi-processor vector computer. There are critical government applications that need a vector processor.

NRIM orders 256 Gflop/s SX-5
The National Research Institute for Metals (NRIM) in Japan has ordered an NEC SX-5/32H2 supercomputer. The system will have 32 processors with a peak of 256 Gflop/s. NRIM does fundamental research for new materials identification, development, and evaluation through use of computational technologies.

France

French Atomic Energy Commission CEA orders Fujitsu VPP5000 supercomputer
The French Atomic Energy Commission, (Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique, CEA) has ordered a Fujitsu VPP5000 supercomputer with a peak performance of 144 Gflop/s. The machine will be delivered to CEA's civil research centre in Grenoble in November 1999 and will replace the current Fujitsu VPP300E system. CEA will use the VPP5000 for a variety of research activities, such as the development of applications in the areas of energy, industry, research, health care, and environmental protection.

Joint Speedup/ORAP workshop
The final programme of the joint Speedup/ORAP workshop to be held in Paris October 26, 1999 is available.

French supercomputer centre CNUSC gets a new name and new machines
The national supercomputer centre for the French universities, located in Montpellier, received a new name, new statutes and new machines. Total computing power of the new centre will be 0.2 Tflop/s.

Germany

Europe's new number 1: Leibniz' Hitachi
In March 2000, Europe will have a new number one supercomputer. As expected, the Leibniz Rechenzentrum Munich, has selected a parallel vector supercomputer as its new high-end machine. Surprising it is, however, not a Siemens/VPP or a NEC SX-5, but a Hitachi SR 8000. When installed early next year, the machine will have a peak performance of 1.3 Tflop/s. Two years later it will have been expanded to 2.2 Tflop/s. The machine which costs 30 million euro, is financed by the German and Bavarian governments.

Portugal

VECPAR'2000 - last call for papers
The conference VECPAR'2000, the 4th International Meeting on Vector and Parallel Processing, has issued its last Call for Papers. Deadline for submission of articles and tutorials: October 29, 1999.

United Kingdom

Second T3E for UK Met
The United Kingdom Meteorological Office (The Met. Office) has bought a second Cray T3E for daily weather forecasting and long-range studies that simulate the impact of global climate change on food and water resources. The machine has 608 processors.
Earth hotter than Sun
Britisch scientists used quantum physics and two powerful Cray 3TE supercomputers to devise a method to determine the melting point of iron under the extreme pressures, that constitues the Earth's core. Their results, published in the science magazine Nature, calculated that the iron melting temperature is 6500 Celsius, about as hot as the Sun's surface. Considering the 10 percent of impurities in the Earth's core, the researchers reduced the figure to 5500 Celsius.

SEP-Tools workshop
On 5 October 1999 the SEP-Tools workshop will be held at the CCRLE offices in Sankt Augustin. SEP-Tools is a European project which aims to short circuit the pain of migration by providing an integrated suite of tools which closely match the requirements of porters of real codes. A clear decision to select only 'best-of-breed' tools has led to a set of innovative (but usable) tools which provide the key functionality so desperately needed when one wants to port and optimise a code.

Applications

MDL ported to Solaris
MDL Information Systems will port its ISIS Server foundation products, including ISIS/Host by the end of fourth quarter, 1999, and Chemscape and Cheshire for ISIS soon to follow, to Solaris. MDL provides discovery informatics for the life science and chemical industries.
Technical Programming Extensions for Compaq Enterprise Toolkit
Compaq announced the Technical Programming Extensions for Enterprise Toolkit that provides tools and documentation for Fortran technical programmers and integration of many key tools into the Enterprise Toolkit with easy access. The kit includes, amongst others, NAG, Vampir, and Totalview.
NAGWare f95 Compiler for LynxOS
The Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) said they will release their NAGWare f95 Compiler on the LynxOS platform. NAGWare f95 is the world's first compiler that implements features that will be included in the next standard, Fortran 2000. The NAGWare f95 Compiler has been available for some time on a wide range of Unix platforms and this range has now been extended to Lynx Real Time Systems' LynxOS. Initially the compiler will be available on the PowerPC, but it may subsequently be ported to other hardware platforms operating under LynxOS.

SGI's Cray T3E at EPA to Help States Gain Cleaner Air
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) bough a T3E to create increasingly precise atmospheric models that will help states ensure compliance with tougher air quality standards. These new atmospheric models, will permit researchers to study the interactions of multiple pollutants in a single "cyber atmosphere" rather than modeling each pollutant individually. This results in a more accurate model that enables better environmental decision-making.
NAG releases Mark 19 of the Fortran Library
The latest release of theNAG Fortran Library, Mark 19, will shortly be available. It contains more than 60 new routines that extend and improve the functionality available in the areas of Fast Fourier Transforms, optimization, eigenvalue problems, sparse linear algebra, statistics, and operations research. The addition of a sparse nonlinear programming routine to the existing Optimization chapter will be of particular interest to people wishing to solve large scale optimization problems, such as those arising in financial, engineering and aerospace applications.

IBM RS/6000 S80 Server Scores New SAP R/3 Performance Record of 16,640 SD Benchmark Users
IBM announced record-breaking performance for SAP R/3 inter-enterprise business solutions, supporting 16,640 Sales and Distribution (SD) benchmark users in the three-tier client/server benchmark. This is 15 percent better than the nearest benchmark effort to date, with 2,240 more users. IBM also is the first to break the 5,000,000 barrier performing 5,007,000 dialog steps/hour. This is equivalent to 1,669,000 fully business-processed order line items per hour.

ESI Group announces new version of SYSWELD
ESI Group announced SYSWELD 99, the new version of its welding and heat treating simulation software. SYSWELD enables engineers to simulate continuous welding. resistance welding, quenching, induction hardening, thermo-chemical treatment, and surface treatment. SYSWELD detects deformations due to welding that cause fit and finish problems. In addition, it predicts residual stresses that enable failure risks to be evaluated. For continuous welding operations, where the heat source moves at a constant rate, SYSWELD drastically reduces computational time by offering steady-state conditions.
IBM and Baan Smash ERP benchmark record with new RS/6000 Server
IBM annnounced it has broken the previous world record for Baan enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications performance. IBM used a 24-way RS/6000 S80 database server with Oracle8 database software to achieve 17,441 BRUs, breaking a previous record claimed by Sun Microsystems by 62 percent. The benchmark demonstrates the scalability of Baan ERP solutions running on the IBM RS/6000 S80 server.

Compaq's Alpha Servers to power Data Broadcasting's ticker plant
Data Broadcasting Corporatio, a provider of real-time financial market data to traders and individual investors, today announced the installation of Compaq's Alpha servers to power both of DBC's ticker plant data centers. This new, state of the art, processing capability ensures that Data Broadcasting's more than 15,000 eSignal subscribers are further guaranteed true real-time market data and provided the time-advantage to capitalize on the market's moves.

ParaSoft releases newest version of automatic runtime error detection tool
ParaSoft, released Insure++ v5.1 for Unix their automatic runtime error detection tool. Insure++ offers developers the most thorough and advanced means for detecting errors in C/C++. The newest version includes three different levels of error detection. Developers can choose from Lite, Minimal, and Source Code Instrumentation depending on what their needs are. This allows for greater scalability with the project at hand and gives developers the convenience of uncovering errors early in the development process.

International Pacific Research Center in Hawaii acuires Cray SV1 for climate research
The International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) at the University of Hawaii. IPRC, the world's only climate research center specifically focused on the Asia-Pacific region, will use a new Cray SV1 vector supercomputer to accelerate basic research on regional climate change. Jointly funded by the United States and Japan, IPRC will use this boost in computing power to increase the resolution and size of its coupled ocean-atmospheric models. Specifically, IPRC scientists will be able to incorporate ocean temperature, current and salinity data from grid points just 50 kilometers apart into complex models that help them understand the effects of global warming, how the Pacific Ocean transports heat and the predictability of the Asian-Australian monsoon system.

Sun posts SAP records with Starfire configuration
Sun Microsystems has set an industry record in the newly released SAP Standard Bank Customer Accounts (BCA) application benchmark. Sun Enterprise 10000 servers and Sun StorEdge arrays processed over 3.57 million postings to bank accounts per hour in day processing and over 3.21 million accounts balanced per hour in night processing. Benchmarking tests were conducted in close cooperation with SAP and Sun in the SAP Sun Competency Center in Walldorf, Germany, and the Sun Benchmark Center in Beaverton, Oregon. The configuration for the day processing part of the benchmark consisted of six Sun Enterprise 10000 servers, Starfires, each configured with 64 CPUs and 64 GB memory.

SGI And Cornell University Open First Financial Industry Solutions Center
SGI and Cornell University opened the first Financial Industry Solutions Center (FISC), a joint venture dedicated to helping the financial community solve their most challenging computational problems in risk management, financial engineering and business intelligence. With the participation of software developers and solutions providers, FISC is a resource and partner for financial corporations worldwide offering hands-on evaluation and testing of parallel, visulaisation and software technologies, customized solutions and onsite consultation for software optimization.

Cluster computing

Motorola Uses Linux cluster to develop next generation semiconductor devices
Atipa Linux Solutions has implementation of a 200 node cluster system with a compute server capable of .5 teraflops in peak floating point performance and utilizing Red Hat Linux operating systemsat Motorola. The company will use the cluster system to enhance its atomic and device scale modeling to develop next generation semiconductor devices.

Comparison of Code Development Tools on Clusters
The Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre has published a report on "Comparison of Code Development Tools on Clusters", written by Lorna Smith. Smith tested tools in the categories: Profiles and Debuggers and compared their functionality and quality. Unfortunately, all tests were performed only on Sun Solaris systems, which limits the usability a little bit. Nevertheless the report provides good information on a number of tools.
Black stone's compute farms
Blackstone Technology Group, a new US company focused on "compute farms". Blackstone delivers its expertise, proprietary monitoring software, and its systematic approach to designing and building compute farms in a new offering called ComputeFarm Advantage
NOAA gets US$ 15 million Linux cluster
One of the fastest computer systems in the world has just been acquired by the Department of Commerce to help the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) further improve existing weather forecast models and develop new ones. The $15 million contract has been awarded to High Performance Technologies, Inc. (HPTi) of Reston, Va., to provide a High Performance Computing System to NOAA's Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL), located in Boulder, Colorado. By the final upgrade in 2002, the HPTi supercomputer, an alpha based Linux cluster, will be able to process at about four Tflop/s.
Compaq ports Shmem and Checkpoint/Restart on ASCI clusters
Within the US ASCI Pathforward Program Compaq in collaboration with Quadrics Supercomputers World (QSW) Ltd, Bristol UK, ports Shmem, the fast Cray communication library, on Alpha clusters. Additionaly they are implementing Checkpoint/Restart, as an add on to the QSW Resource Management System for production support of long running jobs. These elements maximise the compatibility between current systems and protect the investments in software. As Cray's highly optimised scientific library (SCILIB) is still running on the Alphas, Compaq and QSW offer the Cray T3E environment for their Cluster, which is connected via QsNet, the Quadrics Communication Network. With all these elements Compaq plans to position its ASCI-system - the Codename is Sierra - in the T3E arena, as there is no successor of this computer announced by SGI/Cray. Will Sierra be a T3F, or even as others call it U4F, as all the dimensions of the T3E have been incremented.

HPCN industry

Seven computer companies bundle I/O ideas
Seven computer companies, Compaq, Dell, Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM, Intel, Microsoft Corp., and Sun Microsystems announced today the intent to merge the best ideas of the Future I/O (FIO) and Next Generation I/O (NGIO) input/output architectures into one specification to be used by server and peripheral vendors throughout the industry. A new industry group is being formed and will adopt technologies and concepts from both NGIO and FIO efforts.

SKY Computers Introduces Merlin Industry's Fastest Embedded Multiprocessor System
SKY Computers introduced the Merlin embedded multiprocessor for VME boards and systems. Merlin delivers 10.6 Gflop/s of performance on a 6" x 6 " square circuit card. It is the only multiprocessor product on the market to use four of the new MPC7400 PowerPC microprocessors with AltiVec technology on a single daughtercard.
Visual Numerics completes consulting engagement for Boeing
Visual Numerics has successfully completed a 13-month consulting engagement for Long Beach, Calif.-based Boeing Commercial Aircraft Co. Visual Numerics' technical consultants worked with Boeing on an integrated flight test data processing system, of which Visual Numerics' PV-WAVE software is an integral component. The data processing application was used to analyze in-flight test data for both on ground systems and on board the test aircraft. Visual Numerics performed similar work for Sandia Laboratory and other companies.
American Megatrends Ships high performance RAID controller
American Megatrends released the MegaRAID Enterprise 1500, a high performance 64-bit PCI Ultra2 LVD SCSI RAID controller for enterprise-class servers. The Enterprise 1500 cotrollerreaches sustained sequential throughput of 210 MB/sec. and a random I/O rate of more than 8,000 I/Os per second. All Major operating systems are supported, including Novell NetWare, Windows NT)/2000, SCO UNIX, UNIXWare, DOS, Linux, Solaris and OS/2 Warp.

RS/6000 server uses 24 copper chips to break e-business speed records
Using its innovative copper. chip technology to deliver the RS/6000 S80, what IBM claims to be the world's most powerful e-business Unix server. The 64-bit RS/6000 S80 uses up to 24 microprocessors built with IBM's innovative copper chip technology to set new world records for Web serving, Java performance and enterprise resource planning (ERP). IBM says it 24 copper chips also surpass the performance of servers from Sun that use up to 64 microprocessors. In addition, a Sun E10000 with 64 microprocessors and 64 gigabytes (GB) of memory costs about 50 percent more than an RS/6000 S80 with 24 microprocessors and 64 GB of memory.

New RS/6000 POWER3 SMP nodes and T70 Technical Server
Both commercial and scientific customers using the IBM RS/6000 SP now can upgrade to even more powerful POWER3 SMP nodes. Compared with their predecessors, the new nodes deliver four times the number of processors, have four times the memory and have eight times the peak memory bandwidth. The maximum disk capacity has increased 18 times and the number of I/O adapters 26 times compared with their predecessors. These nodes are ideal for solving large scientific problems or for complex decision support. The RS/6000 T70 Technical Server uses the new POWER3 SMP nodes in a compact form factor and is ideal as a departmental server for handling numeric- and I/O-intensive applications such as computer-aided engineering, computational chemistry and seismic analysis.

SUN CTO to AOL
Sun Microsystems' William J. Raduchel has resigned as the company's chief technology officer. to join America Online.

Fujitsu Launches MOPAC 2000, Facilitating very fast Quantum Mechanics Calculations on Macromolecules
Fujitsu Systems Europe Limited (FSE) announced the launch of MOPAC 2000 which, for the first time, allows chemists to perform very fast quantum mechanics computations on macromolecular systems such as proteins, polymers and crystals. The patented algorithms in MOPAC 2000 now enable biochemists and materials chemists to take advantage of the powerful property prediction capabilities of quantum mechanics on systems of over ten thousand atoms. Memory size and CPU time limits conventional quantum mechanics packages to a few hundred atoms. MOPAC 2000 can perform optimizations orders of magnitude faster, using dramatically less memory than conventional semi-empirical and ab initio packages.
IBM/Sequent merger one step further
IBM announced that the Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period relating to IBM's proposed merger with Sequent Computer Systems has expired. IBM and Sequent are still awaiting approval of the merger from the Commission of the European Communities.
HPCN Europe 2000
HPCN Europe 2000, May 10-12 2000 in Amsterdam, will consist of focussed workshops and a scientific Conference, covering the field of HPCN from the (industrial) end-user applications to new scientific results in computational science and computer science. This year however, the scope of the conference is further expanded with an additional theme to emphasize the information management aspects, and the importance of the web-based cooperative application infrastructures. Closing date for papers is January 8th 2000.
Volume shipments of Cray SV1
SGI has begun volume shipping of its Cray SV1 supercomputers, the first in the company’s line of scalable vector systems. By the end of this month, SGI expects to complete most shipments against this initial order backlog of 68 Cray SV1 systems totaling more than 1,400 Cray SV1 processors. Among initial customers for the Cray SV1 are the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) and the US National Cancer Institute.

News supercomputer model from Hitachi
Hitachi will release worldwide an enhancement model of "SR8000 Series", the "Model F1, beginning from September 20th. This is an addition to the lineup of the super technical servers created by the Information & Telecommunication Systems . The Model F1 provides processing capability of up to 6.1 Tflop/s. The company expects to sell over 120 systems of the SR8000 Series, including current models, over the next three years.

HAL Computer System introduces Fujitsu SPARC SMP Servers
HAL Computer Systems, a Fujitsu subsidiary, announced three additions to the family of Fujitsu SPARC64 servers for North America. At 272 MHz, the highly efficient GP7000F delivers 17.6 SPECint95, 26.6 SPECfp95 and 816 Mflop/s. In the near future Fujitsu will offer faster SPARC64 processors, larger SMP configurations.
Montery comes to live on Merced
IBM, SCO and Sequent today announced that the Monterey/64 operating system is the first commercial Unix to run on Intel's Merced chip. The operating system boot on the Intel chip was completed at Intel's facilities in Dupont, Wash.

IBM-Sequent merger completed
After getting the permission from the European Commission, IBM has completed the merger with Sequent Computer Systems. The latter is know a wholly-owned subsidiary of IBM
IBM ships millionth copper-based PowerPC 440 chip
IBM has reached a major milestone in the shipment of its one-millionth copper PowerPC chip, just one year after shipping the first copper chip. The company also announced the industry's highest performance embedded processor to date, the copper-based PowerPC 440, which can be used to boost the flow of traffic in the routers, hubs and switches that power networks like the Internet.

SUN ships Solaris version 8 to beta customers
Sun Microsystems is shipping the first beta version of the Solaris 8 operating environment to approximately 300 key customers and independent software vendors (ISVs). The beta release, available simultaneously for both SPARC and Intel platforms, has many new feature enhancements including an improved, easy-to-use AppCert testing tool that verifies existing Solaris applications will run unmodified on the Solaris 8 operating environment.
Compaq stops Alpha developments for 32-bit NT
According to Associated Press, Compaq has abandoned efforts to make its advanced Alpha computer chips compatible with 32-bit Windows 2000, the next version of the NT operating system due out later this year.

Apple introduces new G4 as world's first desktop supercomputer
Steven Jobs unveiled Apple Computer's new 500 MHz G4 machine, claiming it to be ``the world's first desktop supercomputer.'' Jobs said that the G4 was more than twice as fast as the Pentium machine, which was running at a speed of 600 Mhz.

Linux

SGI releases tools for Linux software development
SGI has released to the open source community Jessie, a next-generation Integrated Development Environment (IDE) framework that will simplify and accelerate the creation of Linux applications. Jessie provides debugging and performance analysis tools in a highly visual graphical user interface.

Media and visualisation

Virtual Explorer Environment makes learning complex concepts fun
A research group at the University of California in San Diego (UCSD) announced that the Virtual Explorer science-based virtual reality adventure is now available at no cost to schools, museums and researchers. This interactive simulation of a voyage through the human immune system makes it fun to learn about the highly complex mechanisms that help fight disease.

Rorke Data together with SGI in Digital Content and Asset Management
Rorke Data and SGI will offer Rorke's FLEXSTOR.db Digital Content and Asset Management solution for the Origin server platform. By offering FLEXSTOR.db for Origin servers, Rorke and SGI claim they are offering one of the first asset management solutions that also integrates SGI's storage area networks (SAN) on SGI's scalable ccNUMA architecture.

nCUBE Debuts MediaCUBE 4 - Next Generation Video Server
nCUBE's new scalable video server is called the MediaCUBE 4. It is nCUBE's third generation video server and fourth generation hypercube computer, MediaCUBE 4 can scale from under 500 Megabits per second (Mbps) to 132 Gigabits per second (Gbps) of sustained video delivery.

SUN announces digitial television partners programme
At the IBC in Amsterdam, Sun launched the Java TV Solutions Partner Program in an effort to accelerate the development of standards based interactive television solutions for consumers. Sun is launching this programme to bring together a community of companies who are committed to providing open client or server solutions for cable operators, satellite operators, and broadcasters.

New HP workstation
Hewlett-Packard Company introduced the HP VISUALIZE J7000: a high-performance four-way symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) system featuring 8 Gbyte memory capacity.

Gigabit backbone for German Research Network
German telco DeTeSystem, is currently building the next German Gigabit Research Network (G-WiN). The order from DFN (German Research Network Association) is worth 70 million euro. The high-speed network, based on wavelength-multiplex technology, provides a set of 2.5 Gbit/s-fiber channels, resulting in 25 Gbit/s in 2001, 80 Gbit/s in 2002, and up to 120 Gbit/s in 2003.
Fujitsu computers to offer CLARiiON`s full fibre channel disk arrays Europe-wide
Fujitsu Computers today signed an agreement with the CLARiiON Advanced Storage Division of Data General Corporation that will result in a Fujitsu Fibre Channel storage solution for the European market. Fujitsu joins a growing list of server vendors worldwide offering customers CLARiiON Fibre Channel storage products to complement their own high-end server offerings.

NEC To Launch 160 Gbps WDM optical submarine cable system
NEC has launched a Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) based 160Gbps (10Gbps x 16) optical submarine cable system called "SLR160S". NEC will start to deliver the system in March 2000. NEC is the first company in the world to realize more than 300 km of long-distance, non-repeatered submarine transmission on 160Gbps WDM system. This system has the ability to upgrade on 320 Gbps(10Gbps x 32). NEC anticipates the sales of 20 billion yen in coming 5 years.
E-commerce and bank transfers no longer considered save
A group of researchers led by Herman te Riele from the Centre of Mathematics and Computing Science (CWI) in Amsterdam, has cracked a 512-bit RSA number. These types of numbers are in day-to-day use by for instance banks to transfer money. It is the first time that such a number from the real "RSA challenge list" has been factored. This could have profound implications on electronic banking and e-commerce. There are larger numbers, like 1024-bit RSA, but these slow down transfer. Also, the USA government does not allow this type of technology to be exported. The Te Riele group used a cluster of 300 workstations distributed over a number of institutes which calculated in total 35 years on the problem. This means that you need only a few million euro to install a system that can crack 512-bit RSA numbers routinely and give access to, for instance, financial, medical and commercial data.