GOVERNMENT

The data explosion of the 21st century requires government decision makers to progress from information overload to timely, credible insights in order to take effective action. Silicon Graphics today announced that the company will showcase its industry-leading compute, storage and visualization solutions at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC), Nov. 28-Dec. 1, demonstrating the kinds of collaborative visual environments utilizing multiple data sources that government leaders and analysts require for homeland security, defense and intelligence applications. Defense and intelligence sensors, satellites and other assets generate massive amounts of data essential for combating threats to America's national security. The problem is providing timely insights that effectively link the vast number of disparate and complex data sources government decision-makers and analysts must use to address U.S. national security challenges. What is required is the ability to rapidly access, process, visualize and share massive amounts of data from different sources in a way that government agencies can uncover the critical linkages and insights in the data. "Now more than ever federal, state, and local agencies need to integrate stove piped systems into a Common Operating Picture through shared data in a visual format that turns vast amounts of data into the knowledge required for making and communicating critical decisions," said Thomas Stanley, director of defense and intelligence, SGI Federal. "Data and media fusion are critical for government leaders and planners to make timely decisions using SGI's core competencies of high performance compute, storage and visualization of massive and dissimilar data sets. This ability to ingest, fuse and display data in an ultra-high resolution format with collaboration across multiple clients and locations empowers decision-makers with the ability to visually represent complex data and to effectively transform the defense and intelligence decision cycle." Compute At I/ITSEC 2005, SGI will showcase the high-performance, highly scalable SGI Altix family of servers and supercomputers powered by Intel Itanium 2 processors and running the Linux operating system. SGI's industry-leading Altix architecture provides a powerful and versatile high-performance computing platform for some of the most demanding government applications, including ballistic missile defense, homeland security, weather and climate forecasting, simulation-based acquisition, training systems, research and development, command and control, and surveillance and reconnaissance. SGI combines this same high-performance compute technology with advanced visualization capabilities in the new Silicon Graphics Prism system. In the SGI booth #101, a networked Silicon Graphics Prism deskside system and a mid-range SGI Altix 350 server will demonstrate how Visual Area Networking (VAN) technology can be integrated to enable collective interaction as well as major efficiencies in data management and sharing in a real-time environment. Through VAN, a concept that SGI pioneered, government users located anywhere and utilizing mission-critical applications using SGI OpenGL Vizserver software can access large visual data sets. Store Multiple government users running Linux, IRIX, Solaris and Windows operating systems need access to large data sets as they move through various stages of the defense and intelligence decision cycle. The SGI InfiniteStorage CXFS shared filesystem within an SGI Storage Area Network (SAN) is designed to enhance workflow and reduce costs by eliminating file duplication and the time it takes to move large files over the network. Unlike network file sharing, where all data goes through the file server (which often becomes a bottleneck), CXFS reads and writes data directly over the SAN to and from disk. Demonstrations at the SGI booth #101 will include a centralized diskless boot server enabling "live" Multi-Level Security data-classification changes. The SGI Diskless Operation Server Solution solves one of the most demanding system administration challenges facing government agencies: managing the explosion of classified data that require processing data at multiple levels of security. Built on SGI InfiniteStorage technology at its core, the Diskless Operation Server architecture allows customers to choose between a high-performance SAN or a low-cost NAS to access shared data on a system by system basis, ensuring the right balance of performance and solution cost. Visualize Using Intel Itanium 2 processors and ATI FireGL graphics, Silicon Graphics Prism demonstrations at I/ITSEC will highlight a new Media Fusion environment which exploits the potential of a scalable shared-memory architecture to efficiently manage the ingestion, fusion and sharing of pixel data from multiple sources. Visual information from multiple PC- and Silicon Graphics Prism-based applications will be integrated and displayed in the SGI booth on a Sony SXRD 4K projector with 3840 x 2160 pixel resolution. The image in the demonstration is seamless and will display multiple video data streams in real time in an ultra-high resolution format. Visit the SGI booth #101 or the web to learn more about SGI government solutions at its Web site.