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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., -- SGI today announced the availability of the SGI(R) Altix(TM) 3000 family of servers and superclusters, a remarkable leap forward for scientists, engineers and other users of advanced technical computing systems. SGI Altix 3000 systems combine SGI's supercomputing architecture with Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 processors and the Linux(R) operating system, shattering scalability and performance records. For users in physical and life sciences, manufacturing, oil and gas, and government and defense markets, SGI Altix 3000 superclusters offer stunning scalability and performance increases over traditional Linux-based clusters and UNIX(R) OS-based servers. Each node runs a single Linux operating system image with up to 64 Itanium 2 processors and 512GB of memory. With multiple nodes using the SGI built-in cluster interconnect, data is transmitted up to 200 times faster than with conventional clustering methods, enabling SGI Altix 3000 to scale to hundreds-and eventually thousands-of processors. "Only SGI is 100 percent focused on meeting the demands of technical and creative professionals," said Bob Bishop, president and CEO, SGI. "This requires unique understanding and methodologies. Repurposed e-commerce machines disappoint in this market." The resulting SGI Altix 3000 superclusters work like supercomputers because they are the world's first clusters providing global shared memory across nodes and operating systems. Supercomputers typically require massive amounts of global shared memory to tackle complicated models, like global climate prediction or wind tunnel simulations for aircraft design, which cannot be easily solved in smaller pieces. The marriage of global shared memory and the Linux operating system creates amazing breakthrough opportunities for technical users on a standards-based platform that is built like a cluster yet works like a supercomputer. "A few months ago the idea of Linux nodes beyond eight processors was only a dream," said Jon "maddog" Hall, president and executive director, Linux International. "By moving the performance of clustered memory to approach that of main memory, SGI has unlocked the doors to address whole new categories of problems that were either difficult or incredibly inefficient with the previous generation of standards-based clusters. Yet SGI did it with a standard set of programming interfaces." Record-Breaking System Performance Results show that SGI Altix 3000 delivers world-leading performance and price/performance, surpassing traditional clusters, high-end microprocessor-based servers and vector-based supercomputers(1). So far, it has achieved: -- World-record 16, 32 and 64-processor server floating-point performance(2) -- World-record memory bandwidth, surpassing all microprocessor-based systems(3) -- Fastest Linux I/O performance(4) -- Unsurpassed scalability on technical Linux applications(5) (Details of these results were announced in separate release issued by SGI today.) The foundation for all of these results is the balanced system architecture provided exclusively by the SGI(R) NUMAlink(TM) system interconnect fabric. Common to both the proven SGI(R) Origin(R) 3000 server and the new SGI Altix 3000 family, NUMAlink delivers memory and communication information between cluster nodes up to 200 times faster than standard clustering switches. Data crosses over an SGI NUMAlink switch, round-trip, in as little as 50 nanoseconds-less time that it takes a beam of light to travel 50 feet-enabling balanced, sustained application performance on supercomputing workloads. The ultrafast NUMAlink connection's low latency and high bandwidth provides the basis for global shared memory. (Details of global shared memory and other software capabilities were also announced in separate release issued by SGI today.) "SGI is delivering a highly innovative and scalable solution for IT and technical computing users who crave performance, reliability and affordability," said Mike Fister, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Enterprise Platforms Group. "Coupled with the Intel Itanium 2 processor, SGI's system will help to usher in a new era of standards-based high performance computing." Pricing and Availability The SGI Altix 3000 family of servers and superclusters are available in both deskside entry-level and the scalable supercluster models. The entry-level server is available in the first quarter of 2003 and starts at $70,176 (U.S. list) at four processors with up to 32GB of memory and scales to 12 processors and 96GB of memory. The supercluster model, also available this quarter, scales to hundreds of processors and over 1TB of memory today, with future scalability to 2,048 processors and 16TB of global shared memory. A 64-processor SGI Altix 3000 system starts at $1,129,262 (U.S. list), roughly one-third the price of a 64-processor IBM(R) eServer(TM) pSeries 690-based system and less than half the HP Superdome(TM). All SGI Altix 3000 models are upgradable to the upcoming Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 - Madison microprocessor and are available through SGI worldwide sales offices and authorized channel partners. For more information on the new SGI Altix 3000 family of servers and superclusters or other SGI products, services or solutions visit the web site at www.sgi.com Editors Notes: (1) Servers and supercomputers tested against include: HP Superdome(TM), HP Server rx2600, HP AlphaServer GS, IBM(R) eServer p690, Sun Fire(TM) 15K, and CRAY C90(TM), CRAY T90(TM), the CRAY SV1(TM) and the Fujitsu VPP5000 CMOS, NEC SX-5. (2) SPECfp(R)_rate_base2000, from the Standard Performance Evaluation Committee (3) STREAM Triad (4) First with greater than 2GB/sec of I/O throughput, more than double any known competitors' claims (5) Examples of 64-bit applications include Gaussian(R), computational chemistry application from Gaussian, Inc. and STAR-CD, computational fluid dynamics application from CD adapco Group. "A few months ago the idea of Linux nodes beyond eight processors was only a dream," said Jon "maddog" Hall, president and executive director, Linux International. "By moving the performance of clustered memory to approach that of main memory, SGI has unlocked the doors to address whole new categories of problems that were either difficult or incredibly inefficient with the previous generation of standards-based clusters. Yet SGI did it with a standard set of programming interfaces." -- Jon "maddog" Hall, President and Executive Director, Linux International "SGI has put forth a compelling vision for supercomputing, an area where edge-of-the-art hardware performance is still critical. Its server strategy gives customers freedom to choose between their existing MIPS and IRIX environment and a future Intel Itanium and Linux-based product. By leveraging the Intel platform and continuing to work with leading MCAE developers to optimize applications performance, we foresee SGI making high-productivity computing solutions more broadly available to manufacturing organizations than ever before." -- Bruce Jenkins, Executive Vice President, Daratech, Inc. "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. 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." -- Peter S. MacDonald, President of adapco and General Manager of CD "ANSYS and our industry-leading partners like SGI continue to be at the forefront of developing technology and collaboration tools that deliver to customers high-productivity computing solutions for large and complex analysis problems. We are excited about the new SGI Altix 3000 server family, and look forward to our continued partnership with SGI to push the envelope in performance and productivity." -- Mike Wheeler, Vice President and General Manager, Mechanical Business Unit, ANSYS Inc. "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. SGI offers Linux users and developers a unique environment, with state-of-the-art processor performance and large-scale symmetric multiprocessor systems." -- Michael Frisch, President, Gaussian, Inc. "We are excited to explore the potential of conducting research on the new SGI system based on the Intel Itanium 2 processor. We expect to drastically increase our computing power over the existing system for earthquake and volcanic eruption analyses. This new dimension in high-performance computing will enable us to handle much bigger data and enhance the quality of our research. We chose this system because of SGI's extensive experience in high-performance computing and because of the company's product roadmap, which includes enhancing this product's scalability in the months and years to come." -- University of Tokyo's Earthquake Research Institute "We are pleased that SGI is now offering a complementary choice of operating environments for their powerful SGI NUMAflex architecture. Sybase's enterprise database customers will be able to choose either IRIX or 64-bit Linux--whichever delivers maximum competitive advantage from each specific application. In addition, our joint customers rely on efficient information flow and access in the heterogeneous environment by using SGI CXFS for sharing any filesystem data and Sybase's data management and data integration solutions for enterprise-wide database connectivity, including database-filesystem links." -- Raj Nathan, General Manager, Enterprise Solutions Division, Sybase "Today's announcement reinforces SGI's leadership in delivering complex data management solutions by extending their scope into the Linux environment. LSI Logic Storage Systems is proud to work closely with SGI to give customers excellent return on investment by providing high performance storage solutions tightly integrated with SGI's data management technologies." -- Flavio Santoni, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, LSI Logic Storage Systems "Altair Engineering has been an SGI customer and business partner for many years. We believe the new SGI Altix 3000 will be attractive to customers who need high scalability and are migrating their HPC environments to the Linux operating system. Altair Engineering intends to optimize our PBS Pro - Workload management Software and Optistruct structural optimization software for this new SGI server." -- Michael Humphrey, Vice President of Enterprise Computing, Altair Engineering "LEGATO Systems is excited to be providing information protection for SGI Altix 3000 systems. LEGATO NetWorker for Linux provides superior backup and recovery for SGI's new standards-based family of servers and superclusters with Intel Itanium 2 processors. Today's announcement is an example of our mutual commitment to the high-performance Linux computing market." -- Victoria Grey, Vice President, Information Protection, LEGATO Systems, Inc. "To maximize the performance of distributed HPC workloads, Platform has specifically designed an integrated Grid-enabled workload management solution, Platform LSF HPC for SGI, which provides advanced scheduling policies to optimize SGI's unique architecture. With this integrated solution, SGI's scientific and educational customers can solve larger, harder and more complex parallel computing problems faster and more reliably than ever before, with maximum return on investment." -- Paul Hill, Vice President, Business Development, Platform "In the educational and scientific research market environment, Linux clusters are popular but the new SGI platform takes Linux clusters a leap forward -- scaling to up to 64 Intel Itanium 2 processors in a shared memory system. We are excited that SGI has developed the world's most powerful Linux supercomputer, optimized for the HPC environment, which allows high bandwidth, and low latency memory access. Serious researchers will applaud SGI's commitment to this market." -- Jeff Eisenhard, Vice President of Sales, James River Technical Inc. "SGI's expanded HPC strategy offering dual platform scalable server products for both MIPS processor with IRIX OS and Intel 64-bit architecture with Linux OS provides users a choice of high-performance computing solutions. The new density enhancements of the Origin 3900 along with SGI's new highly-scalable Linux system allow us to customize solutions for our government customers to meet the challenges of deployable, scalable, shared memory systems that address their application requirements with unbeatable investment protection."