SGI (NYSE:SGI) today announced that it will install the company's first 128-processor Linux® cluster at the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), bringing new technologies to the Ohio research and education community. As the adoption of Linux systems expands across all marketplaces, Ohio scientists, educators and engineers can begin to use the state's largest Beowulf cluster as a starting point into scalable high-performance computing.
"Presenting new technologies, like the 128-processor Linux cluster, to Ohio is central to OSC's mission," said Charlie Bender, executive director, OSC. "This type of project provides the center with an opportunity to expand its role as a statewide resource by bringing even more scalable computing power to Ohio's scientists and engineers. This collaborative project with SGI will help us assist researchers using Linux at their desktop to use the high-performance computing systems found both at OSC and the National Science Foundation supercomputer centers."
Beowulf clusters like OSC's are specialized supercomputers that are gaining popularity in the technical and enterprise computing market because of their high performance at a relatively low cost. Beowulf clusters are used for solving very specific types of problems through what is known as parallel decomposing.
Ohio's research community will be able to access the Beowulf cluster through OSC Networking. OSC Networking is the state's high-performance network providing Internet connectivity to more than a million Ohioans. As a leader in computing and networking, OSC is a state-supported resource for Ohio's scientists and engineers with an impressive array of machines and visualization equipment including Cray T3Etm and Cray T94tm supercomputers, two Origin 2000tm servers and several Silicon Graphics® 320 and Silicon Graphics® 540 visual workstations.
"SGI continues to pave the way for highly scalable, parallel Linux solutions in both technical and commercial markets. Our cluster solutions offer the unique capability to scale both high and wide for the right price-performance to meet our customers' application and budget requirements," said Jan Silverman, vice president of marketing, Computer Systems Business Unit, SGI. "Together with OSC, we hope to focus our attention on building better management tools, workload balancing and high availability for these cost-effective clusters."
The OSC Linux cluster will consist of 32 SGItm 1400L servers, each with four 500 MHz Intel® Pentium® III Xeontm processors. Preloaded with the SGItm Linux® Environment with Red Hat® Linux 6.0, the SGI 1400L server is an enterprise-class server designed to fulfill customer needs for comprehensive and cost-effective solutions that merge SGI's expertise and innovation in scalability, bandwidth and performance with industry-standard components and operating systems.
About OSC
The Ohio Supercomputer Center is a statewide resource located in Columbus, Ohio. High-performance computing and networking converge at OSC to help position Ohio as a technology state. OSC works to bring the latest education and information technologies to the state through its involvement with the Ohio science and engineering community and its role in state and national advanced technology collaborations. OSC is located on the Web at www.osc.edu.
This news release includes forward-looking statements regarding the future relationship between SGI and the Ohio Supercomputer Center which are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in such statements. Such risks and uncertainties include the integration of certain SGI products into the Ohio Supercomputer Center environment, the acceptance of the Linux operating system and related products by markets and customers and the ability of SGI to manage a complex set of engineering, marketing and distribution relationships, and other risks detailed in SGI's current reports on Form 10-Q and Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (http://www.sec.gov).
About SGI
SGI provides a broad range of high-performance computing and advanced graphics solutions that enable customers to understand and conquer their toughest computing problems. Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., with offices worldwide, the company is located on the Web at www.sgi.com.
Silicon Graphics is a registered trademark, and Origin, SGI, and the SGI logo are trademarks, of Silicon Graphics, Inc. Cray is a registered trademark, and Cray T3E and Cray T94 are trademarks, of Cray Research, L.L.C., a wholly owned subsidiary of Silicon Graphics, Inc. Intel and Pentium are registered trademarks, and Xeon is a trademark, of Intel Corporation. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds used under license. Red Hat is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned herein are property of their respective owners.
