"Doing business with reference customers such as NASA Ames Research Center and the University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, we value highly that Solectron does such an excellent job at producing our PCBAs and performs NPI activities in its facility in Milpitas, Calif.," said Dick Harkness, vice president of Manufacturing Operations, SGI. "Having an EMS partner with a robust, near-market manufacturing capability enables us to quickly react to customer needs and offers an added level of supply chain security for mission-critical government accounts." In the case of the recently installed NASA Ames Research Center Columbia system, SGI depended on Solectron to produce PCBAs for 20 SGI Altix systems, each powered by 512 Intel Itanium 2 processors. These 20 systems were installed at the Ames Research Center and quickly became one of the fastest supercomputers in the world with a sustained performance of 51.87 trillion calculations per second, also known as teraflops. "The only higher honor than receiving an SGI Outstanding Supplier Award is knowing that we helped a valued customer achieve a significant milestone in its illustrious corporate history as well as making high-tech history in the bargain," said Mitch Schoch, vice president of Account Management with Solectron. "We have no mission other than ensuring that the expectations of our customers, such as SGI, are not only met but exceeded." In all, SGI presented five Outstanding Supplier Awards in fiscal year 2004 in recognition for distinction and appreciation of exemplary performance and sustained commitment. Criteria for being considered for an SGI Outstanding Supplier award are based on a quarterly scorecard.