INDUSTRY

With Solutions that Integrate Every Phase of HPC Workflow, Company Helps Customers to Handle Data Deluge: Recognizing that most of today's high-performance computing (HPC) solutions fall short when it comes to handling a deluge of data and increasingly complex workflows, Silicon Graphics (SGI) arrived at SC08 to spotlight solutions that integrate every phase of the HPC workflow. At this annual international gathering of HPC leaders, Silicon Graphics this week will demonstrate its integrated, solutions-oriented infrastructure that enables visual insight -- the superior insight that comes only when users can see their information. "The traditional approach to attacking complex science and engineering problems is to compute, store and then move your model across the network in order to visualize the results," said Shahin Khan, vice president of marketing and strategy at Silicon Graphics. "That approach worked when models were smaller and computations were simpler. But a new way is needed when models can have billions of elements and multi-disciplinary science is the norm, and when productivity gains require that we think in terms of the entire HPC workflow. Today, models are much larger than the images or videos that represent them, so it makes much better sense to move the images -- rather than the model -- across the network. Silicon Graphics provides the complete software and hardware solution to do that." Highlights of the company's presence at SC08 include demonstrations of the latest Silicon Graphics solutions in Booth 1009 of the Austin Convention Center. Among them: -- SGI Altix ICE. This award-winning integrated blade platform fuels the world's highest-performance industry-standard cluster (NASA's Pleiades supercomputer, ranked No. 3 on the latest Top500 list), and boasts the highest LINPACK efficiency for any industry-standard cluster ranked among the list's top 100 systems. SGI Altix ICE systems power visual insight by enabling users to work with massive data sets that can then be visualized in place using Silicon Graphics(R) VUE software solutions for real-time analysis and interpretation. (See related announcement on the latest Top500 release.) -- SGI Altix 4700. With the ability to support global shared memory more than eight times larger than any other system, the SGI Altix 4700 system makes the computer's main memory accessible from all of its processors. This speeds visual insight by enabling users to hold multi-Terabyte datasets entirely within memory, allowing for incremental optimization and rapid prototyping. -- Silicon Graphics VUE software visualization suite. The recently unveiled Silicon Graphics VUE software suite allows HPC organizations to combine visual information from any source application or platform, fuse it into an intuitive 3D viewing experience, and securely deliver that experience to anyone -- on whatever device they choose. Among the VUE software on display will be a demonstration of Silicon Graphics PowerVUE, which uses available CPUs or GPUs to render large scale visualizations interactively and in real time, so users can gain visual insight from even the largest, most complex data sets. -- ISLE (Industrial Strength Linux Environment). Silicon Graphics will demonstrate new products in its ISLE environment, including its common Linux management framework that enables HPC users and administrators to achieve visual insight across all system resources. -- Next-generation SGI InfiniteStorage Data Migration Facility (DMF). This technology demonstration spotlights key data management features in DMF, which allow organizations to always keep high priority information close at hand, while lower priority information is seamlessly migrated to less costly storage resources. -- New high-density SGI InfiniteStorage RAID arrays. Many organizations face floor space constraints and power challenges as they struggle with storage of big data. Silicon Graphics addresses these with a range of solutions, including the new SGI InfiniteStorage 15000 with industry- leading density and MAID functionality to save on space, power and cooling costs. SC08 attendees can preview the SGI InfiniteStorage 6120 and SGI InfiniteStorage 4600 that expand this space and power saving technology to mixed workload environments. -- Silicon Graphics Molecule concept computer. This concept computer developed in Silicon Graphics research labs offers a glimpse of the potential future of dense, power-efficient computing. The system combines consumer electronics technology with breakthrough Silicon Graphics Kelvin cooling technology to pack more than 10,000 cores into a single rack.