The Catalonia Polytechnic University in Barcelona has signed an agreement for Bull to provide its “European Centre for Parallelism” (CEPBA) with a Bull NovaScale server to help it meet its high-performance computing needs. The CEPBA is a research centre dedicated to high-performance computing, which works with Ferrari, EADS, Veritas and a number of other leading European companies. Its activities range from parallel computing of a bank’s data warehouse and complex calculations on aero-dynamics for the automotive industry to satellite imaging for agriculture and the optimisation of X-ray therapy in the medical field. The CEPBA is actively involved in several projects with other high-performance computing centres in Europe, including the University of Stuttgart, which is also equipped with a Bull NovaScale® server. For the Barcelona facility, Bull delivered an 8-processor Bull NovaScale® 5160 server, which can be upgraded to 16 processors. The European Centre now has the most powerful environments for its tests and benchmarks. Bull NovaScale® is a range of standards-based modular servers which draw upon Bull’s FAME (Flexible Architecture for Multiple Environments) architecture and leverage the Intel® Itanium® 64-bit family of processors. This combination gives these servers mainframe-class features: scalability, robustness and offer an exceptionally low entry cost for high-end servers. The Intel® Itanium® processor architecture offers almost unlimited potential for evolution over the long term. NovaScale® servers can run Linux® versions of both Red Hat and SuSE, Windows® Server 2003, as well as Bull’s operating system GCOS, to provide Bull’s customers and partners with a wide range of solutions. “The powerful SMP architecture of the Bull NovaScale® servers, together with the performance of the Intel® Itanium®2 processors, will strengthen both our university and industry research at an excellent price/performance ratio,” said Professor Mateo Valeo at the European Centre for Parallelism in Barcelona. “Intel® Itanium® 2 processor-based servers are enabling breakthrough research to happen faster and more affordably for commercial and academic institutions around the world. By combining high scalability with excellent price/performance, Bull NovaScale® Itanium-based servers are spurring discoveries and innovation in sectors ranging from medical to automotive,” said Tom Garrison, Director of Enterprise Marketing, Intel EMEA. “We take pride in our collaboration with this prestigious university research centre,” said Bruno Pinna, Director of the Intel business unit at Bull. “It represents yet another step in Bull’s success in the high-performance computing arena in Europe and is testimony to our ability to provide innovative and competitive solutions in this area.”