ACADEMIA

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- Car buyers worldwide can expect greater crashworthiness and dependability thanks to Volvo Car Corporation, a company already considered a leader in safety. Volvo Car Corporation is enhancing the design-for-safety approach it employs during the development process by signing a substantial agreement for hardware and services with SGI (NYSE: SGI). The agreement includes upgrading Volvo Car Corporation's existing SGI® Origin® 3800 high-performance crash analysis server with an additional 64 CPUs and a two-year 7x24 SGI® FullExpress(TM) customer service contract. This latest investment in SGI® technology and services will continue to help Volvo Car Corporation achieve its long-term strategy of maintaining a leading position in crash simulation and safety. "Building and maintaining a successful relationship with valued customers like Volvo Car Corporation requires fine-tuned professional services and superior technology," said Knut Korsell, vice president of Industry Marketing, SGI. "The expertise of SGI's Professional Services and Customer Services organizations, the key contribution from SGI's Solutions Financing Group, and our reliable high-performance computing products are significant to SGI's position as the main strategic partner for Volvo Car Corporation within their crash-simulation environment." Running the state-of-the-art crash-simulation software RADIOSS from the Mecalog Group, Volvo Car Corporation's SGI® IRIX® OS-based Origin 3800 server is now a 192-processor high-performance computing (HPC) server, with 192GB of memory and a 3.7TB RAID disk array. The system upgrade is being installed by SGI Professional Services at Volvo Car Corporation's department of development in Gothenberg, Sweden. Volvo Car Corporation's Safety Center uses the HPC system to analyze various design proposals during the night, which are then evaluated the following day. This overnight turnaround of several full vehicle crash simulations is achieved because of specific enhancements to RADIOSS. The software benefits from the features of the MIPS® microprocessor architecture and the scalable system architecture of the SGI Origin 3800 server. All HPC SGI® Origin® family servers are based on the SGI® NUMAflex(TM) concept, which sets the standard in modular computing by allowing independent configuration and scalability of components without any central system bandwidth limitation. These modular components isolate the CPU and memory, I/O, interconnect fabric, and storage into separate "bricks." Scalability is no longer measured by how many systems can be linked together, but by the ability to scale the various components of a system to meet demanding application requirements. SGI Professional Services specializes in building solutions and providing services for high-performance computing, collaborative visualization and data management, including industry-specific consulting, expert technology services and ongoing system support. SGI experts apply skill, experience and technical proficiency to help customers address challenging information technology problems and achieve business goals.