SCIENCE

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- SGI (NYSE: SGI), a leading high-performance computing, complex data management and visualization solutions provider, today announced that it has achieved several sales milestones in its recently completed quarter. Since the launch of its revolutionary NUMAflexTM modular computing approach just one year ago, the company announced it has shipped close to 30,000 processors of SGITM OriginTM 3000 series servers and SGITM Onyx® 3000 series visualization systems-including one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, a specially built 1,024-processor SGITM OriginTM 3800 server at NASA Ames for research in the areas of aeronautics, earth sciences and life sciences-to customers around the world. This past quarter also marked the sale of the 500th SGITM Reality CenterTM immersive visualization facility. Some of the companies that have recently purchased or installed new SGITM 3000 family supercomputers include the following: Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University purchased a 768-processor SGI Origin 3800 supercomputer, a 32-processor SGITM Onyx® 3400 visualization system and an SGITM Total Performance 9400 (TP9400) Fibre Channel storage system with 35TB to further its work in bioinformatics and in computational chemistry research and education. SGI will also provide systems integration and services. National Center of Gene Research of Shanghai Life Science purchased a 32-processor SGI Origin 3800 system that will be used for the genetic analysis of rice grain. The aim is to create a higher quality of grain that is virus-resistant and at the same time increase the quantity of rice production. The Scripps Research Institute purchased a 128-processor SGI Origin 3800 supercomputer, two 64-processor SGITM 2000 series servers, 1TB of RAID and an SGITM OriginTM 200 server-all running on a SAN using CXFS, the clustered, shared, high-performance filesystem from SGI-for large computational chemistry simulations, crucial in scientific discovery. University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute for Digital Simulation and Advanced Computation recently purchased two SGI Origin 3000 series systems with a total of 192 processors and 3.5TB of SGITM TP9400 RAW storage configured in a storage area network (SAN) environment using CXFSTM storage management software from SGI. The Supercomputing Institute provides supercomputing resources to University of Minnesota faculty members and their collaborators. Research at the Supercomputing Institute includes, but is not limited to, computational chemistry, computational fluid dynamics, structure mechanics, design optimization, structural and molecular biology, genomics, scientific visualization and geophysics. Audi of Germany selected SGI systems for its entire product development process, from styling and design to simulation and tooling. Audi purchased a 32-processor SGITM OriginTM 3400 high-performance computing system as its crash simulation and structural analysis server in body engineering, an SGITM OriginTM 3200 server with an SGITM Total Performance 9100 (TP9100) RAID storage array with 2.6TB as its file server for tooling, two Origin 200 servers with TP9100 storage arrays with 3.6TB as file servers for CAD and 17 Silicon Graphics® Octane2TM visual workstations for CATIA and Pro/E in design. Audi also has 7 SGI Reality Center facilities installed in Germany. Volvo Car Corporation of Sweden purchased a 128-processor SGI Origin 3800 high-performance computing system in keeping with its long-term strategy to maintain the leading position in crash simulation and safety. Volvo's safety strategy includes two areas: high-performance computing in an early phase of the development of a new car model and real tests. According to Volvo, the extra computing performance delivered by the SGI Origin 3800 system will give the company the opportunity to strengthen its advanced Safety Centre in Gothenburg and will help it guarantee that the end product, the cars, will be dependably safe. Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center recently took delivery of a 512-processor SGI Origin 3800 system. This SGITM supercomputer, one of the world's most sophisticated tools for global weather and ocean modeling, utilizes the largest existing real-time databases of oceanic and atmospheric observations. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory recently deployed a 1,152-processor SGI Origin 3000 series supercomputer to develop new and realistic models for predicting climate variability, detecting climate change and forecasting hurricanes to prevent loss of life and minimize property damage. Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation purchased two SGITM OriginTM 3400 systems for managing a 180TB video database and all querying to the metadata. The foundation has collected more than 50,000 testimonies from 57 countries in 32 languages and is currently cataloguing more than 100,000 hours of videotaped accounts of survivors, liberators, rescuers and other eyewitnesses of the Holocaust. The 200,000-plus-videotape archive would take more than 13 years to view in its entirety. Travelocity.com, one of the most popular one-stop travel sites on the Internet, purchased four SGI Origin 3000 family servers to meet the demands placed on its reservations systems. Travelers book billions of dollars in air, car and hotel reservations each year on Travelocity.com. More than 500 SGI Reality Center Facilities Installed Worldwide Since the opening of the world's first Reality Center facility in Reading, England in 1994, SGI has pioneered the concept of an immersive, collaborative visualization environment. Today, 533 SGI Reality Center immersive visualization facilities deliver the highest quality performance and realism, enabling technical and creative professionals to engage in interactive, real-time engineering and design review, multidimensional data analysis, critical training, presentation and command-and-control operations. At the heart of every Reality Center facility is the SGITM Onyx® family of visual supercomputers, designed to simultaneously process 3D graphics, imaging and video data in real-time. DaimlerChrysler purchased the 500th SGI Reality Center-bringing the total number of SGI immersive visualization facilities within the automotive giant to 53 systems worldwide. With SGI Reality Center facilities, DaimlerChrysler has successfully integrated virtual reality technology throughout its new vehicle product development process. Through visualization of a component, an assembly or a complete vehicle, virtual reality enhances the quality of the development team's work and shortens the time required for product development-allowing the team to introduce new features and respond to market trends more quickly. BP recently purchased its 20th Highly Immersive Visualization Environment (HIVE) system from SGI for seismic interpretation, reservoir analysis, geological modeling, collaborative data analysis and peer review. All 20 systems will be deployed by year-end 2001. Since the first HIVE was purchased more than three years ago, the SGI-equipped HIVES have become an essential and integral part of BP's everyday business. SGI and HIVEs have proven to be a critical link between people and software. BP is a leader in energy companies who are making immersive visualization part of their standard work procedure and BP will be the first to expand the use of visualization well beyond the typical Exploration and Production (E & P) applications. The Picatinny Arsenal Reality Center provides the highest resolution graphics, allowing users to interact with life-size imagery to support the Army's simulation-based acquisition (SBA) and simulation and modeling in support of acquisition, requirements and training (SMART) initiatives. The Reality Center will provide collaborative immersive viewing and interaction with virtual munitions prototypes and virtual reality simulations in real-time. SGI Reality Center technology will help the Army arrive at better decisions in less time-providing enormous cost savings while enhancing productivity and horizontal integration. For additional information visit www.sgi.com