GAMING

DALCO, Switzerland, one of Europe's leading suppliers of high-performance computing systems, has announced that it will be delivering a Dual Core AMD Opteron based supercomputer to Alinghi, the America's Cup defender. In cup racing, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is becoming increasingly important, requiring extensive computing power. The Linux Supercomputer was designed and custom-built by DALCO to meet Alinghi's demanding requirement of increasing previously available computing power by 12 times. "High compute power is essential to drive the yachts to the limit. With Dual Core AMD Opteron processors we get the extra boost at a very attractive price," says Christian Dallmann, founder and CEO of DALCO. "My team is proud of being among the world's first to successfully deploy this techno-logy." François Dallmann, lead engineer at DALCO, adds: "Leading-edge technology is our passion and, once harnessed, it translates into huge benefits for Alinghi, giving them the competitive edge to win." DALCO cooperated with key technology partners on this project. AMD provided the 64-bit Opteron processors, Swissbit produced special memory modules according to DALCO specifications, and Hitachi supplied the storage technology. The cluster will utilize SUSE 64-Bit Linux, integrated and optimized, using DALCO's own cluster management software and best practices. The Alinghi system is currently being prepared at DALCO's Supercomputing Center in Volketswil - a high-tech facility that is unique throughout Switzerland - for performance enhancements and final testing before being shipped to Valencia, Spain. DALCO, headquartered in Volketswil, Switzerland, is one of Europe's leading producers of cluster-based Linux solutions in the field of supercomputing and the leading supplier of Linux-based solutions in Switzerland. DALCO's product range encompasses Supercomputers, custom-configured servers and high-performance workstations as well as extensive SAN and NAS storage solutions all the way to high-availability, fault-tolerant systems. www.dalco.ch