SGI Altix Bx2 System Based On Shared-Memory Architecture Offers Four Times Greater Performance Compared To Existing System

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., (December 21, 2005)—Silicon Graphics (OTC: SGID) announced that the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), has acquired an SGI® Altix® BX2 system high-performance computing (HPC) system for oil reservoir studies. The machine, based on SGI's global shared-memory system architecture, offers up to four times greater performance compared to the existing system at ADNOC and was installed in September.

For its reservoir research, ADNOC will use the new 64-processor SGI Altix system with 128GB RAM running ECLIPSE reservoir simulation software from Schlumberger. SGI Altix uses a single image of the Linux® operating system, and unlike cluster technology, its architecture is much easier to deploy and use. The technology allows fast access to all data in the system's memory directly and efficiently, without having to move data through I/O or networking bottlenecks. While ADNOC will use the Altix system for reservoir simulations other applications that run on the Altix platform include computational fluid dynamics, computational chemistry, and data and systems analysis.

"SGI's leading-edge technology has helped ADNOC in the critical areas of oil and gas exploration and production, said Gilbert Soufan, General Manager, SGI Middle East and North Africa. "The newly installed high-performance computer at ADNOC will provide the company a significant advantage in the area of oil reservoir studies. The computing capabilities of our system are unsurpassed in the industry and we are certain that ADNOC will benefit immensely from this implementation."

Scaling to 512 Intel® Itanium® 2 processors and up to 6 Terabytes of global shared-memory in a single platform, the Altix 3700 Bx2 is SGI's most powerful Linux solution for high-performance computing. SGI Altix 3700 Bx2 leverages the powerful SGI® NUMAflex® global shared-memory architecture to derive maximum application performance from new high-density CPU bricks. The latest configuration also doubles available bandwidth between Altix bricks with SGI's NUMANUMAlink®153; 4 interconnect technology, which is the industry's fastest at 6.4GB/sec and less than 1 microsecond MPI latency.

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SGI, also known as Silicon Graphics, Inc. (OTC: SGID), is a leader in high-performance computing, visualization and storage. SGI's vision is to provide technology that enables the most significant scientific and creative breakthroughs of the 21st century. Whether it's sharing images to aid in brain surgery, finding oil more efficiently, studying global climate, providing technologies for homeland security and defense or enabling the transition from analog to digital broadcasting, SGI is dedicated to addressing the next class of challenges for scientific, engineering and creative users. With offices worldwide, the company is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., and can be found on the Web at www.sgi.com.

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