Alienware, the leading manufacturer of high-performance computer desktop, mobile, and professional systems, today announced that Florida International University has chosen Alienware to deploy a powerful distributed-memory parallel computer to be utilized by the College of Engineering for advanced scientific research in its new Computational Science and Engineering initiative. The parallel computer will be located in the Multi-disciplinary Analysis, Inverse Design, Robust Optimization and Control (MAIDROC) Laboratory at FIU. The server cluster, using high-quality Seagate hard drives and 98 AMDTM OpteronTM CPUs, will operate as a powerful research tool used in the study of hurricane simulation and tracking, protein folding, advanced materials research, biomedical research, and many other sciences. An official ribbon-cutting ceremony scheduled to take place on February 25 at 8:30 a.m. on FIU's campus will mark the beginning of the initiative. "This project will enable FIU to join other world-class research colleges by enabling advanced computational analysis and design optimization in many fields," said George S. Dulikravich, Ph.D., Professor and Chairman of the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at FIU. "Through an extensive bid process, Alienware was chosen because they had exceptional quality and reliability while running intensive applications, 24/7 customer support by specially trained personnel, the availability of customized configurations to meet FIU's requirements, and the best overall value." "Alienware has allocated a full complement of sales and customer support resources to make it fast and easy for educational, business and government institutions to acquire and implement high-performance Alienware systems," said Kevin Wasielewski, vice president of marketing for Alienware Corporation. "Alienware provides a very compelling opportunity for institutions searching to implement a server cluster or outfit their offices with new systems -- power, performance and reliability at an unprecedented value." "Seagate has provided both Cheetah and Barracuda hard drives for FIU's new distributed memory parallel computer to help ensure the Alienware system meets the varied and demanding storage needs of FIU's advanced research programs," said Brian Dexheimer, Seagate executive vice president of Sales, Marketing and Customer Service. "With abundant gigabytes of pooled Seagate storage, these linked systems create a redundant, powerful processing system with failover protection and plenty of storage for the researchers who access the system, easing the way for future scientific advances."