SCIENCE

By Chris O'Neal -- Appro launched 1U and 3U XtremeServers, next generation Opteron-based servers, designed to speed processing for high performance computing and computationally intensive business applications. Both servers are available with Single-or Dual-Core AMD Opteron processors. These systems double the memory availability currently not supported in any other server platform making 4-way processor systems capable of handling up to 128GB - providing extreme memory scalability. To learn more, SC Online interviewed Maria McLaughlin, Director of Marketing for Appro International. Supercomputing Online: Tell us about XtremeServers. Are these products available? If so, what are the details? MM: The Appro 1U Two-way XtremeServer is available now and the 3U four-way XtremeServer will ship the first week of December/05. Appro XtremeServers are Appro's next generation 1U and 3U products. The availability of these new servers expands the Xtreme product line Appro launched last year when it introduced XtremeBlade. The new 1U and 3U XtremeServers provide innovative server technology designed to deliver outstanding performance and reliability with extreme memory scalability for compute and memory intensive applications. It is important to say that these new XtremeServers are the first to be built on motherboards designed by Appro. One of the important features in these servers design is that our motherboard comes with eight memory slots per processor instead of only four slots supported by other motherboard manufactures. This provides to our customers enormous system memory flexibility. The APPRO 1U XtremeServer allows up to 64GB of on-board memory while the APPRO 3U XtremeServer permits up to 128GB. In addition, these servers configured with Dual-Core AMD Opteron processors deliver performance equal to servers with up to double the number of CPUs providing tremendous processing power making a perfect fit for compute and memory intensive applications. That is a new paradigm for server memory availability! Supercomputing Online: Why is Appro now building its own motherboards? How can customers benefit from this? MM: From 1991 to year 2000, Appro was one of the largest OEM rack mount computer systems manufacturers in the United States. Appro’s background was building and providing high quality systems for Tier 1 suppliers such as Cisco and Sun. With that background, Appro changed its business model in the year 2000 and started offering its own line of Appro-branded high-density servers for the high performance computing markets, offering commodity motherboards built in its own Appro’s backplane design, power supply and chassis. The Xtreme product line is the first product where Appro is also dictating the design and feature sets of the motherboard as well. Customers’ requirements are important to us and keeping tight control over the design of the entire server gives us the advantage to deliver the feature set that customers require. Supercomputing Online: What do you see as the industries that will most benefit from XtremeServers based on AMD Opteron processors and how does this appeal to IT needs today? MM: Many industries will benefit, in particular industries that are using applications that are memory intensive, either for financial or Oil and Gas seismic simulation, database, web servers or engineering applications. Any compute-intensive multi-threaded applications will see an immediate benefit. The XtremeServers will increase memory performance for the traditional high-performance computing (HPC) and commercial applications while adding reliability and flexibility for the end-users with the best performance/value. In addition, AMD Direct Connect Architecture drastically improves the memory and I/O latency. This is important as 64 bit applications make their way into the marketplace. It provides a much easier way to address larger chunks of memory faster yielding huge performance boosts. Even 32 bit applications will run faster and better in the new architecture. In the end, we see this technology as being completely pervasive. Supercomputing Online: How easy is to operate the new XtremeServers? MM: Extremely easy. Appro offers a choice of Windows or Linux Operating Systems for its products. In addition, XtremeServers provide ServerDome remote management tool as part of Appro’s comprehensive server solution – the differentiator is that we include this in the price of the server and do not charge extra for it like some other tier 1 OEMs. XtremeServers also provide cable-free design and they come ready to run, simple to install, service and maintain. Supercomputing Online: What are the ideal applications to run on the new XtremeServers? MM: The APPRO Two-way 1U XtremeServer is a perfect foundation for supercomputing clusters for customers who require a flexible density-optimized 1U server. Supported enterprise applications include Beowulf clusters, financial modeling, compute farms, digital rendering, seismic analysis, video streaming, web hosting, complex custom application development, or other applications requiring higher floating-point and memory bandwidth performance. The four-way 3U XtremeServers, brings even more power, impressive memory scalability and end-user flexibility. This server is ideal for large compute-intensive applications such as mechanical and engineering graphic simulation and rendering, computational fluid dynamics, scientific visualization and digital content creation. Supercomputing Online: How does AMD collaborate with Appro in this product announcement? What part do they play and how will this collaboration benefit customers? MM: Appro XtremeServers offer an innovative solution by combining performance advantages of AMD Opteron processors, for example, AMD PowerNow! technology with Optimized Power Management (OPM) which provides performance-on-demand by dynamically adjusting performance based on CPU utilization – helping systems to run at optimum performance and power levels, reducing electricity costs while maximizing IT budget dollars. Appro XtremeServers are designed to provide that versatility and performance for all business sizes - from a multi-tiered web environment and High Performance Computing to a single-function application. In addition, AMD Dual-core delivers greater performance than the single-core offerings. The dual-core product requires additional memory bandwidth and benefits from reduced memory latency. Direct Connect Architecture meets these increasing demands much more efficiently than the front-side bus architecture of our competitor. This provides a great performance advantage delivered by the Opteron solution. AMD has provided us with the tools and technology to accelerate business results. Working together, Appro and AMD provide customer-focused innovations that our High-Performance and Enterprise computing customers' require. Supercomputing Online: Where do Appro AMD Opteron based servers go from here? MM: We believe that AMD will continue to provide industry-leading solutions. AMD was the first to introduce a dual-core offering in the server market. AMD has already announced that they will be introducing multi-core products in the near future. In addition, they will be extending the Direct Connect Architecture to provide enhanced CPU cores, increased memory bandwidth and even higher speed IO bandwidth. We feel that with the availability of our next generation products: XtremeServers and XtremeBlade based on AMD Opteron processors, Appro will make a significant contribution to the High Performance and Enterprise computing markets. We look forward to make first shipments of these new products and continue to look ahead for more product innovations to meet and exceed our customer’s expectations.