MOVIES

SGI said it has developed hardware and software that significantly extend the ability of the Linux operating system to handle the toughest supercomputing problems. They are introducing a family of server systems that allow as many as 64 of Intel Corp.'s Itanium 2 microprocessor chips to share a single pool of memory, roughly four times as many processors as current Linux-based supercomputers. Under some circumstances, a pool of data could be shared by multiple 64-processor systems, allowing hundreds or thousands of processors to be clustered together into large supercomputers, SGI said. Some laboratories now construct supercomputers using huge numbers of Linux-based systems, but the processors typically don't share memory. As a result, the systems must pass data back and forth in ways that reduce efficiency in completing some scientific calculations, such as global-climate prediction and wind-tunnel simulation. The company is hoping to recapture market share in supercomputers, where it has lost ground in recent years to rivals. The development is good news for Intel, which has been struggling to find wide acceptance among commercial customers for its Itanium 2 line of chips. While HP uses Itanium 2, IBM uses a different chip architecture. Cray recently agreed to construct a large supercomputer for Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., using a rival chip from AMD.