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The US' next climate science supercomputer is twice as fast
Ever since 2012, scientists have been leaning on the Yellowstone supercomputer to model and predict climate. It's a powerful ally, especially when it's still one of the fastest computers on the planet. However, it's about to be upstaged: the US National Center of Atmospheric Research has unveiled plans to build Cheyenne, an even beastlier machine. When it's ready in 2017, the Silicon Graphics-made, Intel Xeon-powered supercomputer should calculate up to 5.34 petaflops per second, or 2.5 times more than Yellowstone. It'll also have a whopping 313TB of memory, and 20 petabytes (!) of dedicated storage.
SGI's ICE Cube Air Modular Data Centers can be deployed anywhere, even in the hood
SGI is a shadow of its former self, selling its name to Rackable Systems and appearing in some disgraceful situation comedies. We like to remember the old, harder, edgier SGI, a pioneer in the computer graphics industry when it came straight outta Sunnyvale in the '80s. Now it's back, launching the ICE Cube Air Modular Data Center, capable of housing four racks and expandable up to 80 and a total of 97,920 cores and 143.36PB of storage. Each unit is almost entirely self-sufficient, requiring only power and a supply of water, which can come from a plain old garden hose. Cost starts at $99,000, which isn't cheap, but we went ahead and ordered four. You know how we do it.
SGI announces Octane III personal supercomputer
We've seen companies throw in with personal supercomputing platforms in the past, but if anybody makes a splash with the things we hope it's SGI. The new SGI -- that is, the mash-up of the old SGI and Rackable -- has just announced the Octane III, an office-friendly (one-by-two-foot) tower that can sit under a (fairly large) desk while permitting up to 80 high-performance cores with its nearly 1TB of memory. Options include Intel Xeon 5500 series, Dual-core Atom, or Xeon 3400 processors, and an NVIDIA GP-GPU card. If you're a system administrator with money to throw around and a burning desire to add a machine running Microsoft HPC Server 2008, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux to your network (and who isn't, really?) hit up the read link to talk to a sales rep. Prices start at $7995. Show full PR text SGI Unveils Octane™ III Personal Supercomputer Octane III Delivers Unparalleled Performance, Energy Efficiency and Ease of Use to HPC Users in Office Environments Intel Developer Forum 2009, San Francisco FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SGI® (NASDAQ: SGI) today announced the immediate availability of Octane™ III, the company's first personal supercomputer. This new product takes high-performance computing to a new level by combining the immense power and performance capabilities of a high-performance deskside cluster with the portability and usability of a workstation. The Octane III is uniquely suited for workplace environments and supports a vast range of distributed technical computing applications. Octane III is office-ready with a pedestal, one-by-two-foot form factor, whisper-quiet operations, easy-to-use features, low maintenance requirements and support for standard office power outlets. While a typical workstation has only eight cores and moderate memory capacity, the superior design of the Octane III permits up to 80 high-performance cores and nearly 1TB of memory for unparalleled performance. "Octane III makes supercomputing personal again," said Mark J. Barrenechea, president and CEO of SGI. "Our customers have been asking for office environment products with large core counts that are easy to use and whisper-quiet. Octane III brings all of this to the HPC professional, and enables a new era of personal innovation in strategic science, research, development and visualization." Octane III is easily configurable with single- and dual-socket node choices, and offers a wide selection of performance, storage, graphics, GP-GPU and integrated networking options. Yielding the same leading power efficiencies inherent in all SGI Eco-Logical™ compute designs, Octane III supports the latest Intel® processors to capitalize on greater levels of performance, flexibility and scalability. "IDC research has shown a growing demand for high-performance deskside supercomputers, and the new Octane III personal supercomputer is designed to directly address the requirements of both the entry level HPC technical server market and the desktop workstation market with a high-performance cluster designed to help close the gap between the desktop and the data center," said Earl Joseph, HPC Program Vice President at IDC. "SGI workstations and servers have been highly regarded by HPC scientists, engineers and analysts, and the new system with up to 80 high-performance cores and 1TB of memory is certain to capture the attention of many HPC computing professionals." Octane III is available in a variety of configurations: * Ten dual-socket, Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series-based nodes * One dual-socket, Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series-based workstation with advanced NVIDIA graphics and/or GP-GPU card support * Nineteen single-socket, Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 3400 series-based nodes * Nineteen single-socket, Dual-Core Intel® Atom™ processor-based nodes "SGI's Octane III offers a solution for workstation users wanting to reach dramatically higher levels of performance with minimal investment. With the support of up to 19 Intel® Xeon® processors, HPC users looking to enhance their workgroup productivity outside the data center can also utilize the benefits of the Octane III for faster discovery and quicker simulations," said Richard Dracott, General Manager of High Performance Computing at Intel. "With certification from the Intel® Cluster Ready program, Octane III will provide a powerful, easy-to-deploy personal supercomputer." For a simple, out-of-the-box experience, Octane III ships as a factory-tested, pre-integrated platform with broad HPC application support – powerful enough for the most complex applications in the world. These include fluid dynamics, quantum mechanics, molecular dynamics, seismic processing, data analytics, rendering, visualization and computer-aided design, among many other HPC applications. Octane III supports Microsoft HPC Server 2008, SUSE® Linux® Enterprise Server and Red Hat® Enterprise Linux operating systems. Linux configurations include SGI ProPack™ and ISLE™ cluster management software. Octane III will be on display at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) at Moscone Center, San Francisco, Calif., on September 22-24, 2009, in Booth # 718 at the Technology Showcase in the HyperScale Community. Availability and Pricing: Octane III is immediately available with Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series or Intel® Atom™ configurations. The base configuration price starts at $7,995. For more information about Octane III, please visit http://www.sgi.com/OctaneIII.
SGI name lives on after $42.5 million sale to Rackable Systems
As you know, Rackable Systems was originally hoping to acquire the one-time king of the 3D set for $25 million (with some speculating that even that was a bit much), but it looks like the bankruptcy judges had other plans. Now that the dust has settled (and a check has been cut for almost twice the original asking price) it looks like the two companies will finally merge, forming an outfit called... SGI. The newly minted Silicon Graphics International hopes to combine the strong server business of Rackable with the original Silicon Graphics Inc. name (and overseas service contracts), inspiring the same sort of technological alchemy that once brought the iconic brand to the silver screen by way of such fine cinematic fare as First Kid. In addition, SGI plans continued development and support for the existing Silicon Graphics and Rackable product lines. Quite frankly, we really don't care what they do, as long as they bring back the Indigo -- back in the day we would have killed for one of those bad boys.
SGI to sell itself for just $25m, throw huge sadness party
Man, the difference a few years decades makes. In the 90s, Silicon Graphics helped create silver screen mega-hits like Jurassic Park and Terminator 2, and in 1997, its fiscal year sales totaled $3.66 billion. Today, the company's mired in its second bankruptcy, which has occurred just three years after the first. In order to just terminate the dream before it gets any more nightmarish, SGI has announced plans to sell itself to Fremont-based Rackable Systems for a mere $25 million -- and some analysts are even concerned that the suitor here could be sinking its teeth into a sour deal. The agreement still has to be approved by a bankruptcy judge, and of course, there's still a few more inches of red tape to cut through, but we'll be sure to let you know when the fantasy ends and the wake begins.
RoomRender system dictates living environment, summons Segway
While the choices are nearly limitless when it comes to automating your crib, the novelty factor of turning your microwave on from your bedroom will probably fade with time. Japan's SGI is aiming to making home automation a seamless, all encompassing affair with the RoomRender system. The self-proclaimed "intelligent room system" can not only control all the electronics, lighting systems, and appliances in a given room based on voice commands, but can even release perfumes and dim the lighting in response to emotions. Aimed at luxury hotels, board rooms, and A-class superstars, the system relies on AmiVoice technology to recognize spoken words, which can be used to automatically record specific programs, turn on your home stereo, or grind away those leftovers in the trash disposal. Additionally, the "FeelingWall" component relies on Sensibility Technology (co-developed with AGI) to interpret emotions "based on the intonation and rhythm of voices, adjusting the color and lighting accordingly." The pinnacle of all this, however, is the planned ability to call upon Segways if necessary; a user can demand that his / her Segway be cranked up and rolled over to them, so they don't even have to get up to fetch the reverse-minded machine. Although we're not sure when these will be rolled out in Japan, a working system has already been installed in the company's own office building, and it plans on fetching between ¥5,000,000 ($43,464) and ¥6,000,000 ($52,156) when they go mass market.[Via Pink Tentacle]
SGI suing ATI for...well, you know the rest
Oh how the mighty have fallen: fresh off its emergence from Chapter 11, once-proud hardware manufacturer SGI (a.k.a. Silicon Graphics) chose to celebrate the occasion not with a product announcement or by gifting its employees with bunch of iPods, but by dropping one of the ol' patent infringement lawsuits on recent AMD acquisition ATI. According to the suit, ATI has been violating a 2003 patent covering a "display system having floating point rasterization and floating point frame buffering," which in layman's terms describes a method for "software to operate directly on data in a frame buffer" -- apparently "an important resource in achieving [the] enhanced graphics processing demanded by today's computer systems." Now we're not knocking SGI for defending its intellectual property -- after all, other rival manufacturers have seemingly validated its claim by licensing the patent in question -- but is getting your litigation on really the best way to show the world that your company is back on the field and ready to innovate? The answer seems to be yes, at least according to CEO Dennis McKenna, who is promising that this legal maneuver is just the first of many designed to "aggressively protect and enforce [SGI's] IP." Fair enough, but please make sure that your engineers are doing their R&D thing while legal does its, um, legal thing, or else SGI may go down in history next to another sullied three-letter acronym: NTP.[Via Slashdot]
Silicon Graphics files for Chapter 11
We can't help but feel a twinge of melancholy as we ponder Silicon Graphics' announcement today that the company is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. However, the SGI of today is a mere shadow of it former self, with a mixed bag of products that range from overpriced, Linux-based, Intel-powered workstations to overpriced, Linux-based, Intel-powered supercomputers. But it wasn't all that long ago that the SGI Indy was considered the hottest thing on the market, and seemed to herald the future of multimedia computing. Of course, that future was pre-empted first by cheaper Unix and Linux options, and later by Mac OSX and even Windows, which was hardly a factor in the graphics industry back in the early 90s when the Indy debuted. So, best of luck emerging from bankruptcy, SGI. We'd like to see you stick around for a bit just for old time's sake. But if we want one of your boxes, we'll skip the new ones, and hunt down an Indy on eBay.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in.]
