With 1,680-Processor SGI Altix System, Scientists Nationwide Now Can Leverage World's 26th Fastest Computing System

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (July 8, 2005)—More than 600 scientists and researchers throughout Australia now have access to the most powerful supercomputer on the continent, as the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC) starts its deployment of an SGI® Altix® supercomputer powered by 1,680 Intel® Itanium® 2 processors.

"The Australian Government has committed to fully support Australian science," said Bob Bishop, chairman and CEO, SGI. "By supporting the APAC installation of a world-class Altix supercomputer from SGI, Australian scientists have access to powerful tools for simulation, innovation and discovery. This is an important step for the country to remain competitive in the 21st Century."

Housed in the APAC National Facility at the Australian National University, Canberra, the SGI system will assist researchers to make new discoveries in areas such as the environment, bioinformatics, astronomy, chemistry and materials science, according to Professor John O'Callaghan, executive director, APAC.

The APAC system is ranked in the June 2005 Top500 list as the world's 26th fastest supercomputer (www.top500.org). It joins other world-class SGI Altix systems whose ability to leverage the SGI NUMAflex® shared-memory architecture places them among the fastest computers on the planet. These include: NASA's 10,240-processor Columbia system; Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute's 2,048-processor supercomputer; the National Center for Supercomputing Applications' 1,024-processor Cobalt system; and a 3,328-processor Altix supercomputer soon to be deployed at Germany's Leibniz Rechenzentrum Computing Center.

SGI Altix systems are increasingly proving essential for running complex scientific applications, due in large part to SGI's fourth-generation NUMAflex® architecture. This unique global shared-memory architecture enables researchers to hold large data sets entirely in memory, allowing for faster and more interactive data analysis, and resulting in more incisive conclusions.

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SGI, also known as Silicon Graphics, Inc., is the world's 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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