SYSTEMS
Mercury Computer Systems Reports Initial Success with Cell BE Processor
Customer orders in-house, customers trained, performance benchmarks available -- Mercury Computer Systems reported significant progress in the commercialization and market adoption of its Cell Broadband Engine (BE) processor-based offerings for data-intensive computing applications at SIGGRAPH 2006 (Booth #828, Hall A). Early access development systems and associated Mercury software have been shipped, and related professional services delivered, to customers across a number of diverse industries that include medical imaging, industrial inspection, supercomputing, semiconductor design and manufacturing, and defense-industry signal processing. Initial orders for Mercury's production release systems are scheduled to ship September 2006. "The Cell BE processor architecture is ideally suited to Mercury's available software," said Craig Lund, Chief Technology Officer at Mercury Computer Systems. "We're excited about how quickly we have been able to drive performance gains for customers thus far, using real hardware and real software."
Mercury engineering personnel are working with customers in all of these areas to validate performance enhancements. Depending upon the application, Mercury has reported performance gains of greater than an order of magnitude, as measured by performance per cubic inch, performance per pound, performance per Watt, or performance per dollar. For example, tests were performed on Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithms using the Mercury MultiCore Plus programming environment on the Mercury Dual Cell-Based Blade system. FFTs are specialized mathematical equations used to drive many high-performance computing applications. Mercury has found these particular algorithms can run 15 to 30 times faster on the Cell BE processor than on the best commercially available substitute processors. "Over the last several months, we have found that Mercury software enablement is critical to achieving these kinds of performance advances," Mr. Lund continued. "Leveraging our software and expertise, Mercury engineering teams have achieved performance improvements for actual customer applications that are projected to reach up to 100X improvement." As a result of these types of performance gains, customers who want to deploy data-intensive applications can realize tremendous performance enhancements and potential cost reductions. Some customers have found that moving their applications to the Cell BE processor can be justified by the power savings alone. Until now, many customers have been unable to improve the performance of their very large cluster implementations because they simply cannot supply any additional power to their building. Consequently, certain customers who replace their large clusters of traditional blades with clusters of Mercury Dual Cell-Based Blades can radically improve application performance; oftentimes with astounding results. The Mercury MultiCore Plus Advantage is representative of the Company's extensive range of tools, libraries, capabilities, and products that enable customers to take full advantage of the power of multicore processors. Mercury has provided training to customers who, with these tools, can complete their own benchmarking, migrate existing applications to Mercury's Cell BE processor-based products, and begin working on new applications. For more information on Mercury's Cell BE processor-based products and services and performance benchmarks, visit Mercury at SIGGRAPH 2006, Booth #828, Hall A; visit its Web site; or call (866) 627-6951.
Mercury engineering personnel are working with customers in all of these areas to validate performance enhancements. Depending upon the application, Mercury has reported performance gains of greater than an order of magnitude, as measured by performance per cubic inch, performance per pound, performance per Watt, or performance per dollar. For example, tests were performed on Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithms using the Mercury MultiCore Plus programming environment on the Mercury Dual Cell-Based Blade system. FFTs are specialized mathematical equations used to drive many high-performance computing applications. Mercury has found these particular algorithms can run 15 to 30 times faster on the Cell BE processor than on the best commercially available substitute processors. "Over the last several months, we have found that Mercury software enablement is critical to achieving these kinds of performance advances," Mr. Lund continued. "Leveraging our software and expertise, Mercury engineering teams have achieved performance improvements for actual customer applications that are projected to reach up to 100X improvement." As a result of these types of performance gains, customers who want to deploy data-intensive applications can realize tremendous performance enhancements and potential cost reductions. Some customers have found that moving their applications to the Cell BE processor can be justified by the power savings alone. Until now, many customers have been unable to improve the performance of their very large cluster implementations because they simply cannot supply any additional power to their building. Consequently, certain customers who replace their large clusters of traditional blades with clusters of Mercury Dual Cell-Based Blades can radically improve application performance; oftentimes with astounding results. The Mercury MultiCore Plus Advantage is representative of the Company's extensive range of tools, libraries, capabilities, and products that enable customers to take full advantage of the power of multicore processors. Mercury has provided training to customers who, with these tools, can complete their own benchmarking, migrate existing applications to Mercury's Cell BE processor-based products, and begin working on new applications. For more information on Mercury's Cell BE processor-based products and services and performance benchmarks, visit Mercury at SIGGRAPH 2006, Booth #828, Hall A; visit its Web site; or call (866) 627-6951. 
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