INDUSTRY

According to the 22nd Edition of the "TOP500" list of the world's fastest supercomputers released this week, Intel processors continue to gain acceptance with high-performance computing (HPC) solutions. Nearly 38 percent of systems on the list use Intel processors, 15 percentage points more than the closest competing architecture and overtaking RISC-based systems for the first time. The TOP500 project was started in 1993 to provide a reliable basis for tracking and detecting trends in high-performance computing. Twice a year, a list of the sites operating the 500 most powerful computer systems is assembled and released. In other news, Intel Corporation at the Supercomputing 2003 Conference unveiled the Advanced Computing Program, dedicating $36 million and additional engineering resources to bolster R&D and investment in future HPC designs and solutions. The list includes 189 systems based on Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 or Intel(R) Xeon(TM) processors, a 58 percent increase from just six months ago and more than triple the 56 systems listed in November 2002. Five of the top 15 systems use Intel processors and the number of Intel Itanium 2-based systems increased to 32, up 68 percent from 19 systems in June. Additional information is available at www.top500.org. In a related announcement yesterday, Intel and the University of California at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) disclosed that they will deploy a supercomputer in January that will use nearly 4,000 Intel Itanium 2 processors and is expected to be a top-ranked system included in the next list to be issued in June. More information on this announcement is available at www.intel.com/pressroom. "We are ecstatic about the acceptance of Intel's standards-based approach to meet the needs of the most demanding applications in the world," said Mike Fister, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Enterprise Platforms Group. "Intel-based supercomputers are enabling breakthrough research to happen faster and more affordably for government, commercial and academic institutions around the world. Our focus on this market segment and its future will benefit from our investment and work with key academia, government and industry advocates on the Advanced Computing Program effort." Other prominent Intel based systems on the TOP500 list include the fourth-ranked system at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) using 2,500 Intel Xeon processors, and the fifth-ranked system at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory using 1,936 Intel Itanium 2 processors. In addition, the seventh- and 10th-ranked systems on the list are at LLNL and use 2,304 and 1,920 Intel Xeon processors respectively. The 14th-ranked system at the Chinese Academy of Science uses 1,024 Intel Itanium 2 processors. Intel's Advanced Computing Program Enables Scalable, Manageable Supercomputing As part of its focus to enable supercomputers built with "off-the-shelf" components, Intel launched the Advanced Computing Program (ACP), a three-year $36 million research and development initiative intended to enable traditional supercomputer users to quickly deploy scalable, high-performance computing systems that can be more easily used and managed. Scientists from Intel will work with leaders in the high-performance computing community from academia, government, and industry to develop and prototype advanced computing technologies. These technologies will include new architectures to deliver effective scalability and computing balance, innovative advanced system software, and software tools, languages, and libraries to accelerate performance. Ultimately the ACP technologies will be deployed to the industry via next-generation "off-the-shelf" computing building blocks, such as the Intel Xeon, Intel Itanium 2, and Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 processors, along with ACP system recommendations. "The Advanced Computing Program is a response to the need for more balanced high performance systems that have greater capabilities and better programming environments for end users," said Justin Rattner, Intel senior fellow and director of the Intel Systems Technology Lab. "Intel is excited to help deliver a qualitative change in the way scientists and researchers will soon be able to do their work. We also intend to work with the industry to make sure that innovations developed at the high-end of computing will eventually benefit all computer users." Intel Demonstrates "Off-the-Shelf" Teraflop Solution Also at Supercomputing 2003, Intel led an industry collaboration to demonstrate an HPC cluster solutions that delivers over one teraflop of computing power using industry standard building blocks including InfiniBand* and PCI Express*. The configuration, assembled in less than two days on the show floor, highlights the ease in configuration of industry standard solutions as well as the performance of a 192 node Intel architecture platform based cluster. Historically, teraflop configurations have taken months to configure and have not been possible to demonstrate in a show environment.