SCIENCE

SGI has announced support and availability of Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 for Octane III, SGI's personal supercomputer. SGI also announced that it intends to expand use of the new operating system across Rackable server and other SGI product lines in the future.

Octane III offers the power of a high-performance cluster with the portability and usability of a workstation with up to 120 cores. Now with Windows HPC Server 2008 R2, Octane III has enhanced power for deskside computational capabilities, empowering domain experts to maximize the efficiency and productivity of their development.

"Schrödinger is delighted to employ SGI Octane III powered by Windows HPC Server 2008 for the development and testing of Glide, our industry-leading docking program, and LigPrep, for the accurate generation of 3-D molecular models," said Peter S. Shenkin, vice president of Schrödinger, a scientific leader in developing state of the art chemical simulation software. "In practice, this combined SGI hardware and Microsoft OS development platform has proven to be extremely robust."

SGI and Microsoft have a strong track record of innovation and proven HPC solutions. The newly-announced Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 extends this collaboration, providing SGI customers with a familiar environment and rich tool-set that enables developers and HPC professionals to spend less time coping with complex technology. Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 makes it even easier to bring the power of technical computing to analysts, engineers and scientists, giving them the computational resources they need to fuel product innovation and accelerate time to market.

"As a company dedicated to leading the technical computing market, we have offered Microsoft HPC solutions since 2005 and are proud to continue our support of Microsoft with Octane III and Windows HPC 2008 R2," said Christian Tanasescu, vice president, software engineering at SGI. "This platform will enable new computational capabilities for an extended set of customers. With our continuing support for HPC 2008 on additional platforms, we are continuing to grow with Microsoft to provide boundless capacity in technical computing markets."

"SGI provides valuable compute capabilities from deskside to supercomputer. By coupling their products and expertise with Windows HPC Server 2008 R2, SGI is extending those capabilities to a much broader audience of technical computing users," said Bill Hamilton, director, Technical Computing, Microsoft Corp. "Together, we help ensure our joint customers accelerate their results, make technical computing power more broadly available, and rapidly advance research and development of pivotal technologies."

SGI also announced the newest addition to its portfolio of Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008-enabled products and services with Cyclone, the world's first large-scale, on-demand HPC cloud computing service specifically dedicated to technical applications. Cyclone is dedicated to technical applications, providing on-demand access to SGI HPC systems to solve the world's most compute-intensive problems.

Availability

For information on Octane III and other platforms with Windows HPC Server 2008 and Windows HPC Server 2008 R2, visit www.sgi.com/microsoft.