AUTOMOTIVE

The Dell High-Performance Computing Clusters (HPCC) program combines a large number of individual servers that act like a single, extremely powerful system for scientific and engineering research, financial modeling and data-intensive business applications at a fraction of the cost of traditional proprietary supercomputers. WesternGeco, one of the world's largest seismic exploration companies, knows well the challenges involved in analyzing millions of bits of data on a daily basis to support its oil and gas industry customers. Working with Dell, WesternGeco recently implemented a 128- and 256-system cluster of Dell PowerEdge servers at its Houston site to provide high-speed processing of seismic images. These images allow the petroleum engineer to see oil, gas and associated rocks from the earth's surface and make strategic decisions that reduce risk, cut costs and increase the ultimate yield. WesternGeco, along with Georgia Institute of Technology, Cornell Theory Center, Sandia National Laboratories and many other companies around the world are taking advantage of Dell's PowerEdge servers for their high-performance clusters capability. "Clusters of industry-standard servers allow for easier deployments, installation and potential expansion opportunities than traditional supercomputing models have provided in the past," said Kannan Venkataraman, area manager, worldwide computer systems and support for WesternGeco. "We selected Dell's high-performance clusters because of the simplicity of the design, reliability and performance combined with the cost-effective nature of standards-based computing. These features will affect the rapid growth and proliferation of compute capacity at our large data centers as well as at our smaller field offices worldwide." Building High-Performance Computing Clusters The Dell HPCC program consists of PowerEdge servers and validated software packages that are available in 8-, 16-, 32- and 64-node easy-to-order configurations. These configurations are designed to be clustered as a single system to handle highly compute-intensive applications and allow customers to add incremental processing as their businesses grow. Dell Technology Consulting, in conjunction with MPI Software Technology Inc. and Paralogic, offers software and service packages that include pre-sales consulting, solution design, implementation planning and on-site deployment to get the high-performance cluster into production quickly. The bundles are available immediately in the United States starting at $75,000 for an 8-node cluster. "This is yet another example of how customers can lower their cost by using industry-standard servers to handle a broad range of computing tasks that could typically only be done by more expensive, proprietary systems," said Randy Groves, vice president of Dell's Enterprise Systems Group. "By combining the power of our enterprise systems with the proven cost efficiencies of the Dell model, we can help our customers deploy high-performance clusters faster and at a lower cost without sacrificing performance." Debra Goldfarb, group vice president of Worldwide Server Research with industry analyst firm International Data Corporation (IDC), believes the trend towards high-performance clusters based on industry-standard technology will make supercomputing-class capability available to all sizes of businesses. "Smaller organizations that previously have not been able to take advantage of high-performance computing because of the cost can now deploy a growing range of applications quickly and easily. With initiatives like Dell's HPCC program, customers of all sizes now have more options to deploy systems based on industry-standard, Intel architectures for high performance, scalability, low cost and guaranteed investment protection." Additional information on Dell's HPCC program is available at www.dell.com/clusters