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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- SGI (NYSE:SGI) today announced that its high-density SGI(R) Origin(R) 3000 server recently led the field in special versions of SPEC(R) benchmark tests for high-performance technical computing. The benchmark results spotlight the massive scalability and continued performance leadership of systems based on the MIPS(R) processor and the SGI(R) IRIX(R) 64-bit operating system. In tests running the SPEComp(R) Benchmark Suite (OMPL2001), SGI outperformed all competing systems from HP, Sun and Fujitsu. In the tests, a 128-processor SGI Origin 3000 system -- using only a quarter of its total 512- processor scalability -- scored 197,838, performing 30% faster than its closest competitor. The results reveal the performance advantage made possible by the vast scalability of the SGI Origin 3000 architecture. The first SPEC benchmark suite designed to evaluate performance based on OpenMP(TM) applications, SPEComp(1) benchmarks are adapted from SPEC(R) CPU2000 tests, and are tuned to measure systems performance comparable to real-world scientific and engineering applications. Designed to simulate workloads of the most demanding applications for medium and large systems, the benchmarks place heavy demands on systems and memory. In another recent SPEC test -- the SPECenvM2002 -- a 128-way SGI Origin 3000 server returned a leading score of 281.12. SPECenvM2002(2) is part of the SPEC HPC2002 suite of benchmarks, which are derived from real-world HPC applications and application practices-in this case, a complex weather research and forecasting model called WRF. The HPC tests measure the overall performance of high-end computer systems, including the computer's processors, interconnection system (shared or distributed memory), compilers, MPI and OpenMP(3) parallel library implementation, and input/output system. "These test results bear out a fundamental premise that has driven the Origin 3000 design goals: HPC applications soar on systems that scale well," said Paul McNamara, vice president, Product Management, SGI. "Much more than a raw compute engine, the Origin 3000 system provides customers with the performance, flexibility and deployability that today's supercomputing environments demand. Clearly, these excellent benchmark results reveal how a balanced, scalable architecture leads to extraordinary performance." The high-density configurations of the SGI Origin 3000 supercomputer family pack four times the computational density of previous configurations into a single industry-standard rack. SGI Origin 3000 now delivers both capacity with extraordinary system density and capability with enhanced development tools for high-productivity mission- and business-critical environments. These attributes are specifically targeted to meet needs in the energy, government and defense, manufacturing, and sciences industries. High-density SGI Origin 3000 supercomputers can readily scale to 512 processors and 1TB of memory in racks that combine up to 128 processors and 256GB of memory per rack. The latest configurations radically increase the amount of memory and data available per processor at any given time by allowing users to maximize the memory and bandwidth scalability within a rack without the need to add additional processors.