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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., -- SGI announced that its new SGI(R) Altix(TM) 3000 family of servers and superclusters, the first high-performance Linux(R) environment capable of scaling to hundreds of processors with global shared memory, has swept the competition in a host of high-performance system benchmarks. Consistently delivering industry-leading performance at every level of scalability, the new SGI(R) systems significantly outpaced competing systems from IBM and HP. The SGI Altix 3000 systems (announced separately today) represent a dramatic advance for scientists, engineers and other users of standards-based computing environments. The new systems combine SGI's supercomputing architecture with Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 processors and the Linux operating system, surpassing traditional clusters, high-end microprocessor-based servers and vector-based supercomputers in system performance and price/performance. As recent tests reveal, the combination of SGI's powerful NUMAflex(TM) architecture and Intel's most advanced microprocessor in an open source computing environment yields potent price/performance breakthroughs in nearly every measurable category. The SGI Altix 3000 family triumphed in across-the-board benchmark and real-world application tests measuring processor and system performance, memory and I/O throughput, and compute-intensive application performance. World-Record Floating-Point Performance In recent SPECfp(R)_rate_base2000 tests, a 1GHz SGI Altix 3000 system generated world-record floating-point performance for a 64-processor server with a score of 862. The closest 64-processor single system image competitor was the HP Superdome(TM) server (at 875 MHz) with a score of 267 -- less than a third the performance of the SGI system. Comparing 32-processor systems, SGI Altix 3000 performed 1.8 times faster than the IBM(R) eServer(TM) p690 system (at 1.3 GHz), and 3.5 times faster than the HP Superdome system (at 750 MHz). The 32-processor SGI system returned a score of 443, compared to 251 for the IBM eServer p690 system and 128 for the HP Superdome system. The 32-processor SGI Altix 3000 results equate to a 300 percent boost in price/performance over IBM eServer p690.(1) World's Fastest Memory Bandwidth Performance As high-performance computing systems escalate in power, many technical computing applications struggle to efficiently access information in memory for optimal system performance. The vastly scalable SGI system architecture answers this key challenge by delivering record-setting memory bandwidth. SGI Altix 3000 superclusters surpassed leading microprocessor-based servers on the STREAM Triad benchmark, which measures memory bandwidth performance. The 64-processor system achieved memory bandwidth of 125 GB per second on a single system image -- an astounding 460 percent lead over the 64-processor HP Superdome system, which delivered bandwidth of 27-GB per second. In tests against a 32-processor IBM p690 server, the SGI system brought home twice the performance of the IBM server, and -- at approximately half the cost of IBM p690 -- a 640 percent improvement in price/performance.(2) No. 1 in Linux I/O Performance The SGI Altix 3000 family has demonstrated sustained I/O throughput of more than 2GB per second running a single copy of Linux, an industry-leading result for Linux systems. With datasets growing ever larger, the ability to move information from disk to memory is an increasingly important component of overall system performance. This remarkable achievement allows Linux applications to overcome the increasing challenge of handling big data in high-performance computing by increasing throughput to levels beyond those attained by most UNIX(R) OS-based systems.(3) Unsurpassed Scalability on Technical Applications In recent tests using CD-adapco Group's STAR-CD(TM) test suite, the SGI Altix 3000 family demonstrated unparalleled application performance and scalability. Performing an exhaustive array of computational fluid dynamics tasks, SGI systems easily outperformed competing IBM servers by a factor of 2x in price/performance underscoring the SGI Altix 3000 family's competitive advantage over systems with less balanced architectures.(4) "SGI continues to advance their HPC leadership in CFD with the introduction of the new SGI Altix 3000 server. Working together, SGI and CD adapco have achieved several breakthroughs in parallel scalability with STAR-CD simulations," said Peter S. MacDonald, President of adapco and General Manager of CD. "In the same spirit, this new scalable Linux server demonstrates further advancements with STAR-CD scalability of 50-fold on a 64 CPU system in preliminary tests. This level of parallel performance is the highest we've observed among Intel Itanium 2 processor-based servers in existence today." In other shared-memory applications that demand leading CPU compute power, memory bandwidth and I/O throughput, SGI Altix 3000 delivered overall outstanding performance. The SGI system outperformed the IBM eServer p690 system in measuring real-world application performance of Gaussian(R), an advanced technical application that allows scientists to predict energies, molecular structures, and vibrational frequencies. Comparing 32-processor systems, the SGI Altix 3000 running Gaussian v98 delivered a 50 percent performance increase over that of the IBM eServer p690.(5) "SGI's achievements with the SGI Altix 3000 family and its robust Linux implementation now make it possible for Linux users to pursue the most advanced scientific problems in chemistry and molecular systems," said Michael Frisch, President of Gaussian, Inc. "SGI offers Linux users and developers a unique environment, with state-of-the-art processor performance and large-scale symmetric multiprocessor systems." "Across the board, SGI delivers industry-leading performance in a standards-based scalable system that meets every price point and technical computing requirement," said Jan Silverman, senior vice president for SGI. "This concept of 'scaling Linux to new altitudes' makes the SGI Altix 3000 family the perfect solution for customers in all technical fields."