SiliconBunny News

What if you could run OS/400, AIX, and mainframe applications on the same box? What if that box could be powered by Itanium, Opteron, X86-X64, or Power/PowerPC processors? This would be pretty cool, right? And it would definitely shake up the server market. Well, a nearly magical piece of software called QuickTransit, created by a little known company called Transitive, does just such a thing, and that software is poised to change the server market in a big way.
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Silicon Graphics (NYSE: SGI - News) today announced that NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is upgrading its computing and data management capabilities with powerful SGI® Altix® servers and SGI® InfiniteStorage solutions. With the new SGI systems providing a platform for new and more powerful ways to analyze environmental data, Goddard engineers can leverage the latest codes from NASA to achieve a faster time-to-solution.
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The UK National Grid Service (NGS) passed a significant milestone in May when Cardiff and Bristol universities joined as the first non-founder members of the service by making some of their computing facilities available on the “Grid”. .........
Through the Welsh e-Science Centre (WeSC), Cardiff University now provides access to its Silicon Graphics IRIX cluster, and through the Centre for e-Research Bristol (CeRB), Bristol University is providing access to a Beowulf cluster of several hundred linked PCs. Neil Geddes, Director of the Grid Operation Support Centre, hailed this as “a major step in the development of the NGS as it moves to become core infrastructure for collaborative research computing”.
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Silicon Graphics (SGI) has launched an aggressive global channel recruitment drive with the aim of switching to a 70 per cent indirect sales strategy by 2008.
The vendor, which specialises in high-performance computing (HPC), visualisation and storage, has also launched its Channel Connection Programme. This will enable partners to develop new business opportunities in the low- to mid-range HPC market and dig deeper into existing markets.
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To accelerate insight into large engineering data sets by leveraging computation and visualization on a single computer platform, Silicon Graphics (NYSE: SGI) today announced that AVL List GmbH -- Advanced Simulation Technologies has certified two widely used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and three major Structural Dynamics software applications for Silicon Graphics Prism(TM) visualization systems. The newly certified AVL applications are respectively FIRE and SWIFT for CFD, and EXCITE, GLIDE, TYCON for Structural Dynamics Analysis.
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The West McLaren Mercedes Formula One team is pleased to announce a new Official Supplier, Silicon Graphics (SGI), for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) supercomputing, storage and visualisation equipment.
The SGI Altix solution will enable the aerodynamics team to model the West McLaren Mercedes Formula One cars -- capturing data that will allow them to review and improve the airflow movement around the car by making design adjustments to car shape, with the aim of gaining the all important, faster lap times.
SGI PRISM will load the 'jobs' which the engineers are running, they are then scheduled onto the SGI Altix and results are displayed back to the PRISM for display and review. The file sharing capability of SGI's CXFS (shared file system) across a Visual Area Network (VAN), enables all the McLaren engineers to access the files 24/7 with no files being moved across the network -- thereby optimizing workflow and engineer productivity.
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Landmark, a part of Halliburton's (NYSE: HAL) Digital and Consulting Solutions Division, selected the new Silicon Graphics Prism™ platform to create the world's fastest and largest advanced visualization computer system in the oil and gas exploration field. Landmark, working with Silicon Graphics (NYSE: SGI) and Intel, will soon offer its global clients real-time, 3D interactivity on multiple volumes of seismic data at a newly designed facility within its Houston, Texas, headquarters. The Silicon Graphics Prism visualization system will enable Landmark customers to quickly explore large numbers of deepwater offshore blocks using massive regional surveys. Also, they will be able to bring oil and gas production online faster by using this 3D environment to interactively plan optimal well paths using all of their geological and geophysical data.
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......Transitive actually launched QuickTransit last September, but the product has only come to my attention because server and workstation maker Silicon Graphics is using it to support applications developed long ago for its Irix-based MIPS workstations and servers on a new line of Linux-Itanium workstations called the Prisms.
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Éclair Laboratories, based in the Paris suburb of Épinay, has built one of the most advanced digital intermediate pipelines in Europe, and perhaps the world. It is capable of handling the kind of data rates that come with doing digital intermediates at 2k for entire feature films.
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Celoxica, Ltd. today announced support for Silicon Graphics, Inc.'s (SGI) Reconfigurable Application-Specific Computing (RASC) technology in the Celoxica DK Design Suite of tools for C-based design and synthesis. Celoxica and SGI have teamed to deliver libraries and tools defining a software programming environment for algorithm acceleration using field-programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs. SGI intends to include evaluation copies of Celoxica's design software as part of its RASC development kit shipping this month.
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With NASA now projecting a mid-July Space Shuttle return to flight, Lockheed Martin Space Systems-Michoud Operations continues their impact analysis of the external fuel tank using the SGI® Altix® computing system and SGI® InfiniteStorage purchased from Silicon Graphics in June 2004. Michoud, which designs and assembles the Space Shuttle external fuel tank for NASA, made the purchase to complete impact analysis simulations of foam, ice, and other debris and to model/analyze the design of the Shuttle's external tank. Michoud chose SGI® high-performance compute technology because SGI benchmark tests demonstrated to Michoud engineers that they could run the three-million-plus calculations required in time to deliver their findings by NASA deadlines.
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IBM Corp.'s supercomputers continue to be the fastest in the world, according to the latest Top500 list of the speediest machines released Wednesday. The company snagged six of the top 10 spots, including the coveted number one and two placings while widening the performance gap between its machines and those of its competitors.........
Silicon Graphics Inc.'s (SGI's) Columbia system at the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Ames Research Center in Moffet Field, California, was in third position with 51.87 teraflops.
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