OIL & GAS

Penguin Computing today announced its new Altus 1300 and 1400 servers based on the AMD Opteron processor, which celebrates two years of innovation in the high-performance computing (HPC) market. Also enabled for the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor, the new servers will give Linux HPC and clustering customers exceptionally high-performance processing. These reliable servers are also well suited for general enterprise infrastructure needs, such as database, web and email servers, because of their flexibility, affordability and scalability in a small, 1U footprint. Penguin Computing is one of the first server solution providers to support 2P/4-core processing with the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor 200 Series. "These new AMD64-based Altus servers are the latest examples of our commitment to continuous improvement at affordable price points to give HPC and enterprise customers the independence to implement things the way they want to, whether they want cluster solutions or infrastructure consolidation," said Enrico Pesatori, chairman and chief executive officer of Penguin Computing. "Our customers count on Penguin Computing for powerful, scalable integrated solutions because they know we provide everything a business needs to run even its most important applications on Linux." "We applaud Penguin Computing for addressing the needs of the high-performance computing market with innovative new products, such as the latest Penguin Computing Altus servers announced in conjunction with the second anniversary of the AMD Opteron processor," said Pat Patla, director, Server/Workstation Marketing, AMD. "The new Altus servers will enable customers to harness the power of the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processors and drive computing efficiency to even greater heights." While the tightening of information technology budgets means more enterprises are searching for more powerful computing solutions at lower price points, a recent IDC report also found that 70 percent of respondents considered HPC and cluster computing so important that their organizations could not function without it. "Linux HPC is the most rapidly growing segment of Penguin Computing's business," said Matt Jacobs, Penguin Computing vice president of sales. "The advent of affordable 64-bit technology has significantly fueled this trend, and we fully expect the new Dual-Core AMD Opteron processors to increase the adoption rate of our cluster offering. Greater server price/performance ratios mean a democratization of HPC, not to mention great return on investment for the customer." Besides providing customers with exceptionally high-performance processing, Penguin Computing is one of the first server solution providers to offer the fast PCI Express serial I/O technology on a 2P/4-core Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor 200 Series-based 1U system. For greater customer flexibility, both a hot-swap SATA HDD version (the Altus 1300) and a hot swap Ultra320 SCSI HDD version (the Altus 1400) of the new Altus server are available. A daughter card for SCSI, hardware RAID or future SAS controllers is included. In addition, the system has a full-height, full-length PCI card slot that accepts most standard PCI-type cards. Customers can even use optional riser cards to configure this PCI slot either as 64-bit/133MHz PCI-X or PCI Express x16. The Altus 1300 and 1400 provide up to 16 GB of 400 MHz DDR system memory each as well as ECC support and dual memory channel capability. They include two Gigabit Ethernet network ports, a four channel on-board SATA controller or single channel SCSI controller, microcontroller-based server management and are compliant with the IPMI 2.0 specification. The new Altus servers also offer hot-pluggable 550W power supplies. All Altus servers support Red Hat Linux and SuSE Linux operating systems.