SYSTEMS

DENVER, CO – The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) selected Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), to build the center's data-intensive portion of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) distributed terascale facility, called the TeraGrid. SDSC will use Sun's iForce(SM) High Performance Computing Storage Area Network (HPC SAN) solution to allow multiple computers -- using a range of operating systems -- to seamlessly share data. SDSC chose the Sun(TM) platform and its iForce HPC SAN solution for its proven performance and scalability, and will leverage Sun Professional Services for architecture guidance. The NSF TeraGrid will be a central part of a growing computational Grid -- a national infrastructure that connects scientific computing resources through ultra high-speed networking. ``As one of the country's leading research and supercomputing facilities, the SDSC works on some of the world's most challenging biological, environmental and computing issues,'' said Mike Vildibill, SDSC High-End Computing Director. ``Sun technologies offer the performance needed to support our data-intensive requirements ranging from storage management, relational databases, data mining and data-intensive scientific applications such as those in bioinformatics.'' Sun's iForce HPC SAN solution provides the benefits of advanced SAN capabilities to high performance and technical computing (HPTC) environments. It provides unified storage and high-speed access to massive amounts of data across heterogeneous computing platforms, and establishes a centralized data, file system and storage management environment that remains in place as additional platforms are implemented in the datacenter. With Sun's HPC SAN solution leveraging the Sun Fire(TM) 15K server and Sun StorEdge(TM) T3 data storage, SDSC will be able to integrate its existing, heterogeneous computing resources; offer the industry's fastest movement of data across the TeraGrid network; and continue to grow the TeraGrid with a wide variety of equipment. ``SDSC's TeraGrid efforts are central to the future of technological research, and we are thrilled that the iForce HPC SAN solution will be at the center of the TeraGrid,'' explained Joanne Masters (formerly Heider), Solution Manager for High Performance and Technical Computing at Sun Microsystems, Inc. ``By deploying the iForce HPC SAN solution on the new Sun Fire 15K system, the most scalable SMP server in the industry, SDSC will have implemented a state of the art infrastructure available to power its data-intensive technical computing-based research.'' Innovation, Efficiency and the HPC SAN Solution HPTC performance depends on the speed at which data is acquired, processed and distributed, but traditional HPC systems hinder the process by attaching separate storage to each computational platform. As a result, storage systems were often expensive, redundant and difficult to manage and expand. Several HPTC datacenters have implemented Network Attached Storage (NAS), which offers some improvement over islands of storage, but does not provide the comprehensive data management functionality of a Storage Area Network (SAN). The Sun HPC SAN is the first to replace this architecture with a single, efficient system for simultaneous storage and data access across a wide range of computing platforms. As a result, users eliminate the costs of hardware redundancy and create products and solutions more quickly through efficient processing and sharing of data. In addition, the system establishes a single point of data, file system and storage administration, for easier overall management and expansion. The TeraGrid node at SDSC will use a Sun Fire 15K server as the HPC SAN Metadata Controller (MDC). The MDC will combine the iForce HPC SAN solution with SDSC's Storage Resource Broker software with approximately 250 terabytes of Sun's Sun StorEdge(TM) T3 data storage to manage the metadata for over one petabyte of nationally distributed TeraGrid data. The iForce HPC SAN solution will provide a gateway to grid-distributed data, providing support for databases, data management and data mining for the NSF's TeraGrid. In addition to SDSC's adoption, Sun's iForce HPC SAN solution is currently installed in a pilot program with The Boeing Company, where the solution enables storage and distribution of vast amounts of data and overcomes obstacles of fragmented storage and limited data sharing. In trials, Sun's HPC SAN system demonstrated extremely impressive efficiency of over 90 percent at the high data transfer rates typical of HPC environments. Deployed with a 2.4 GB/second input/output bandwidth between computing platforms and the SAN, the system sustained data movement of over 2.2 GB per second. Easing Implementation Sun's iForce HPC SAN solution is one of a growing number of solutions available as part of the company's iForce Initiative. Through its iForce Initiative, Sun works with its best-in-class iForce partner community to deliver customer-driven solutions that solve business problems and help customers reduce risk and time-to-service. The iForce HPC SAN solution is a pillar of the new set of HPTC solutions designed to jumpstart applications access, provide cross-platform connectivity, as well as data access, management and control, allowing disparate commercial and scientific communities to work together simply and seamlessly across the globe. The HPC SAN solution is ideal for a wide range of markets that depend on processing high volumes of data, such as signal and image processing, biosciences, scientific research and development, rich media and oil and gas. Customers can conduct proof-of-concept demonstrations using the HPC SAN solution in Sun's Customer Benchmarking Center in Beaverton, Oregon. Sun delivers the iForce HPC SAN solution to it's customers by way of Sun Professional Services Storage Practice. HPC SAN Solution Demo at Supercomputing 2001 Attendees to Supercomputing 2001 (November 12 through 16) are invited to Booth 645 to observe seamless data sharing through a single HPC SAN supporting multiple computers using disparate operating systems, at industry leading performance levels. For more information visit www.sdsc.edu or www.sun.com