SGI Equips HLRN

BERLIN and SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Under a new contract signed this month, SGI (NASDAQ:SGIC) will equip the North German Group for High- and Highest-Performance Computers (HLRN,http://www.hlrn.de/) with a new SGI(R) Altix(R) supercomputer complex 60 times more powerful than HLRN's current HPC resource.

Within the framework of a new cooperative project, the six German states of Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig-Holstein have agreed to pool their resources, along with funds from the federal government, to purchase the new system, known as "HLRN-II."

The two-phase installation includes approximately 25,000 processor cores:some 12,500 cores will be deployed at the HLRN's facility in Berlin, with the remaining 12,500 installed at the HLRN's facility in Hannover. The initial SGI(R) Altix(R) ICE and SGI(R) Altix(R) XE systems will be deployed on the premises of the HLRN system's operators: the Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum fur Informationstechnik in Berlin (ZIB, http://www.zib.de/) and the Regionales Rechenzentrum fur Niedersachsen (RRZN, http://www.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/) in the spring of 2008. Both systems will be connected via a rapid data line:the so-called "HLRN Link." The two system complexes in Hannover and Berlin will be closely integrated and interconnected to create a unified overall system (one-system characteristic).

After the second phase of expansion has been completed, the HLRN's new supercomputer complex will have a maximal performance of 312 Teraflops per second. This means that the North German Computer Group will own and operate one of the world's highest-capacity systems.

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