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MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- SGI (NYSE: SGI) today announced that Ford Motor Company, a longtime SGI customer, has purchased a 192-processor, 500 MHz SGI(TM) Origin® 3800 server system and 6TB of SGI(TM) Total Performance 9400 (TP9400) RAID storage. The system has been configured as a single system image and is currently operational in the Computer Server Systems division at Ford's Dearborn, Mich., headquarters. The SGI Origin 3800 and SGI TP9400 systems will be used by the Numeric Intensive Computing (NIC) group -- responsible for managing and deploying Ford's high-performance computing (HPC) environment -- to more effectively run compute -- and I/O-intensive automotive CAE applications, including crash simulation, noise vibration and harshness (NVH), finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics. As high-performance computing technology has advanced, the CAE models used to design cars and trucks have grown in size in an attempt to capitalize on the additional computing power. Economics have continued to create pressure for lower-cost computing solutions and quicker turnaround time. The 192-processor SGI(TM) IRIX® OS?based SGI Origin 3800 server, with highly modular SGI(TM) NUMA technology, has shown an incredible ability to efficiently scale across more processors than previously installed hardware. This allows Ford to run larger models across multiple processors to achieve acceptable turnaround times for the users. One specific area of increased performance is in crash simulation. Using Mecalog's new RADIOSS SPMD version, the SGI Origin 3800 system is able to run the same models faster than the traditional RADIOSS SMP code by utilizing the improved scalability in the SPMD version. Significant gains are also apparent in the NVH area, using the latest versions of MSC Nastran®. ``Ford is showing its commitment to quality, safety and time to market by choosing SGI Origin 3800, one of the world's most advanced computers,'' said Dan Sweetwood, HPC account manager, SGI. ``Ford has made a big investment in very powerful high-performance computing, demonstrating why it is one of the world's automotive leaders.'' ``SGI Origin 3800 and SGI TP9400 are enabling Ford to solve bigger problems than it could solve before and solve routine problems more quickly,'' said Dale Eckart, SGI Managed Services engineer. SGI provides an on-site support and systems administration team as part of its Global Customer Services. This team of engineers has been an integral component to Ford's HPC environment for many years. ``The system allows Ford to do more variations on a design and more analysis of individual designs much more quickly. Ford can test more engineering questions and consequently make better, more informed decisions.'' Following the sale, the immediate role of the SGI Managed Services team was integrating the SGI(TM) hardware with Ford's NIC environment, including batch job submission, file serving and security. The Managed Services team used its engineering expertise to ensure optimum performance. Because of the high performance and reliability of SGI Origin 3800, Ford can now run CAE models faster and build larger and more complicated models, which result in more precise and accurate data on quality and safety concerns. An added plus of the SGI Origin 3800 system is that a number of users from Ford affiliates around the world, particularly in Europe and Australia, are able to log in and access the high-end capabilities of the system in Michigan. ``Ford chose SGI Origin 3000 series technology because it has the ability to be configured as a single system image across a large number of processors (up to 512 today) and scale applications beyond other competitive platforms,'' added Sweetwood. ``Ford uses crash simulations on SGI Origin family servers to ensure that its vehicles continue to receive five-star crash ratings and to further improve vehicle safety.'' For more information visit www.sgi.com