SYSTEMS

SPECIAL COVERAGE FROM ISC2006 -- At the 21st International Supercomputer Conference today, AMD announced that several AMD Opteron processor-based systems are listed among the world's highest-performing supercomputers, as determined by the TOP500 Organization (its Web site). The AMD Opteron processor, via its Direct Connect Architecture featuring HyperTransport technology, delivers superior performance and scalability for cluster and multiprocessor computing in commercial and research environments. These performance advantages are leading to increased market penetration across all sectors of the worldwide server market during the last three years, including such industries as financial services, energy, and digital media, as well as university and government installations. "Supercomputer developers were among the first to embrace the AMD Opteron processor," said Marty Seyer, senior vice president, Commercial Segment, AMD. "Since that time, traditional enterprise datacenters, facing the same rigorous performance, value, power and cooling requirements, are increasingly choosing AMD Opteron processor-based systems. We are demonstrating that AMD64 is the innovation platform for the future, through our planned quad-core processor roadmap, and our recently announced Torrenza program which allows for the development of special purpose accelerators that will take computing potential to the next level." In a recent supercomputing win, AMD Opteron processors were selected for a multi-year contract that Cray, Inc. signed with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to provide the world's first petaflops-speed (1,000 trillion floating-point operations per second) supercomputer. The total contract calls for progressive upgrades to ORNL's existing Cray XT3 supercomputer, starting with Next-Generation AMD Opteron processors with DDR2 memory later this year, followed by upgrades to the use of quad-core AMD Opteron processors, which will be socket compatible. These upgrades will accelerate peak speed to 250 teraflops (250 trillion floating-point operations per second), planned in late 2007. ORNL is then expected to install a next-generation Cray supercomputer in late 2008. This system, currently code-named 'Baker,' is designed to deliver peak performance of one petaflops, making it roughly three times faster than any existing computer in the world. All systems provided for in the contract will utilize current and future versions of the AMD Opteron processor. "Cray is continuing its long-term commitment to building our next-generation platforms on AMD64 technology," said Cray president and CEO Peter Ungaro. "All Cray supercomputers are designed to accommodate future higher density multi-core processors in order to leverage and protect our customers' investment in these systems. The recently announced upgrades to ORNL's Cray XT3 supercomputer will ensure ORNL is operating on the most advanced platform to serve their computing needs well into the future." The world's largest AMD Opteron processor-based supercomputer ranked seventh on the Top500 list. The Tokyo Institute of Technology's TSUBAME supercomputer uses Sun Microsystems Sun Fire servers powered by more than 10,000 AMD Opteron processor cores. In provisional tests in May 2006, TSUBAME achieved a sustained performance of 38.18 teraflops. Satoshi Matsuoka, professor in charge of computing infrastructure at the Global Scientific Information and Computing Center, Tokyo Institute of Technology, said: "I am strongly aware that one reason why TSUBAME now ranks as seventh on the Top 500 list is the robust, advanced processing performance of AMD Opteron. The Tokyo Institute of Technology intends to construct future Japanese supercomputers in the petaflop-speed class. Accordingly, we plan to proactively consider and utilize a range of cutting edge technologies, and specifically AMD processors." Earlier this month, the High Performance Computing Center (HLRS) at the University of Stuttgart installed a visualization cluster manufactured by DALCO AG, using AMD Opteron processors running software enhanced by Microsoft's Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003. "Our high performance visualization cluster at HLRS - the high performance computing department of the University of Stuttgart - is based on AMD Opteron technology because it best fulfilled the University's requirements," said Christian Dallmann, CEO of Swiss DALCO AG. "The demand for high-end graphics in combination with the outstanding compute power of the AMD Opteron processor gave us full flexibility to fulfill our demanding goal to provide superior visualization services to the prestigious automotive industry in the Stuttgart area." Said John Borozan, group product manager, Windows Server Division at Microsoft Corp: "Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 helps power and improve the parallel rendering capabilities of the visualization software used by HLRS. High performance computing environments are among the most demanding, and the AMD Opteron processor ensures that software operates to its full potential." Finally, AMD Opteron processors will be featured in a recently announced supercomputer planned by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Appro, a leading provider of high performance enterprise computing servers, storage and high-end workstations, announced this week that, in conjunction with Voltaire, a worldwide leader in grid backbone solutions, it will provide more than 16,000 Next-Generation AMD Opteron processors with DDR2 memory to LLNL. The three will work together on LLNL's Peloton Supercomputing Project, a high performance computing environment to be used by 8,000 LLNL scientists and engineers. "We are extremely pleased to work with AMD to deliver LLNL one of the world's largest, highest performing clustered supercomputers," said Daniel Kim, Chief Executive Officer, Appro. "Using Next-Generation AMD Opteron processors with DDR2 memory for Appro 1U Quad XtremeServer Clusters ensures we have the processor that will deliver industry-leading price/performance and performance-per-watt, which helps this research to be conducted as efficiently, rapidly and cost-effectively as possible. Additionally, AMD offers critical investment protection via a seamless migration path. When more computing power is required, a quad-core upgrade can be implemented versus buying an entirely new, expensive system." According to Mercury Research, AMD's first quarter x86 server market share represents 22.1 percent, a 26 percent increase over AMD's share in the fourth quarter of 2005 and a 254 percent increase over the first quarter of 2005.