ENGINEERING

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) announced today that Dell has signed on as the center's newest Private Sector Partner. NCSA's Private Sector Partner Program [http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Projects/PrivateSector/] puts the center's expertise and technological innovation to work on the real-world challenges faced by industry, while enabling companies to reap the benefits of early access to breakthroughs. In addition to Dell, NCSA's other current partners include Allstate, Boeing Phantom Works, Caterpillar, Exxon Mobil, IBM, and Motorola Labs. Dell will leverage NCSA's expertise in several areas, including the development of monitoring tools, computer and network security, and Linux BIOS development. "Our supercomputing customers are using standards-based systems to tackle some of the world's most challenging research projects," said John Mullen, vice president of Dell's Higher Education business. "We look forward to strengthening our high-performance computing offerings through our work with NCSA's Private Sector Partner Program, as well as contributing the best practices that Dell's engineers have accumulated from our thousands of cluster deployments." In 2003, NCSA worked with Dell to install an Intel Xeon-based Linux cluster that employs more than 1,450 dual-processor Dell PowerEdge servers. The system debuted at number 4 on the Top500 list [http://www.top500.org/] and currently is listed as the tenth-fastest supercomputer in the world. NCSA also recently added a 7-teraflop cluster of 512 Dell PowerEdge 1850 servers to its machine room. "NCSA has worked closely with Dell to provide cutting-edge high-performance computing systems to the nation's scientific researchers," said NCSA director Thom Dunning. "We look forward to moving this already productive partnership into new areas."