Appro announced that the Appro Xtreme-X Supercomputer based on the future Intel Xeon processor E5 Family is selected by the Center for Computational Sciences at the University of Tsukuba. The award marks the University's second consecutive large-scale HPC system purchase from Appro.

This multi-million dollar system will provide the computational support for advanced scientific research and multi-disciplinary programs covering a wide range of research and education areas, including particle physics, astrophysics, biophysics and climate. The Appro system is well suited to support the University's multi-disciplinary research activities, which often involve the coupling of HPC applications and scientific datasets from diverse scientific fields in the study of new fields of science.

"This award shows that Appro has a strong track record for customer satisfaction and repeat business while helping to elevate the international computational competitiveness of Tsukuba Japanese University," said Earl Joseph, IDC Program Vice President for Technical Computing. "Appro continues to capture more international HPC procurement contracts and with an Appro local Sales Office presence in Japan and Korea, they should be well positioned for the future. IDC projects that supercomputers based on cluster architecture will continue to be the main growth engines for the HPC market, driving server revenue from close to $10 billion dollar a year in 2010 to more than $13 billion a year by 2015."

The Appro Xtreme-X Supercomputer, named "Frontier Computing System" by Center for Computational Sciences at University of Tsukuba is a hybrid system that will consist of two CPUs and 4 GPUs per node with a total of 4,288 CPU cores and 548,864 GPU cores, achieving up to 802.07 Tflops of peak performance based on the future IntelXeon Processor E5 Family. The supercomputer is designed to optimize floor space, power utilization, and cooling efficiency using Appro's air-cooling technology and techniques, highly efficient power supplies and fans, with integrated system management capabilities. The system is interconnected with dual-rail Mellanox Connect X3 QDR InfiniBand. It will be pre-configured with Appro's HPC Software Stack to include Appro Cluster Engine (ACE) remote management software delivering diskless operation, fast booting, load balancing and failover capabilities for non-stop operation; all factory integrated and ready to ship with Appro's turn-key System Delivery Integration Services. In addition, to fulfill local service requirements, Appro Japan sales office has joined forces with a local service and support team to provide Tsukuba with extensive on-site professional services installation, training and 24/7 maintenance support. The Appro Xtreme-X Supercomputer will be delivered in December 2011, with user production to begin no later than January, 2012.