ACADEMIA

Today, NEC announced the sale of the HPC Server SX-8i, a deskside vector operation supercomputer that achieves a processing power of 16 GFLOPS (billion floating point operations per second). The space-saving server measures 45x70x70cm, and maintains complete compatibility with the SX Series supercomputers. Equipped with the world's smallest single-chip vector processor, the same as the one used in the SX-8 machine, the SX-8i can mount up to 32GB DRAM and delivers a thruput of 64GB/sec between the processor and memory, ensuring highly efficient use for advanced scientific and computing applications. The SX-8i supports a built-in hard drive capacity of 146GB. The deskside supercomputer supports SUPER-UX, the same operating system as the SX-8, and offers a compiler with an auto vectorization function and a lineup of various programming tools. The new product sells for 12 million yen ($109,000) in a minimum configuration. Shipment is slated for February 2006. NEC is aiming to ship 300 systems over the next three years.