National Cancer Institute Receives Coveted Bio-IT World Best Practices Award for Data and Image Analysis on Silicon Graphics Prism Visualization System

SGI's Visualization Systems and Collaboration Capabilities Cited as Integral to NCI's Approach to Finding Causes and Cures for Cancer

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (July 8, 2005)—With the help of breakthrough visualization technologies from Silicon Graphics (NYSE: SGI) - the National Cancer Institute (NCI), has been named one of six Grand Prize winners of Bio-IT World magazine's third annual Best Practices Awards. At a recent ceremony at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Jack Collins, manager, Scientific Computation and Program Development, SAIC¹ - Frederick, Inc., accepted the Grand Prize in the category of "Knowledge Management." The winning organizations were recognized for their noteworthy innovations and results in the research, development and manufacture of bio-IT-enabled (bioinformatics) therapeutics and diagnostics, as well as the underlying business strategies that support them.

In the Bio-IT World article announcing the honorees, posted on their website, Kevin Davies writes that the Best Practices Award for Knowledge Management was given to the National Cancer Institute for, "An exciting example of data analysis in the field of confocal microscopy, produced with the help of Silicon Graphics, resulting in novel visualization, analysis and collaboration capabilities for researchers studying the biological origins of cancer." NCI uses a Silicon Graphics Prism® visualization system powered by Intel® Itanium® 2 processors and running the Linux® operating environment.

"We are very pleased to congratulate the dedicated scientists and researchers at the National Cancer Institute on receiving this prestigious Best Practices award from a distinguished panel of their peers," said Greg Estes, vice president of marketing, SGI. "We also thank Bio-IT World for recognizing the contribution of Silicon Graphics solutions. SGI Altix high performance compute, Silicon Graphics Prism visualization systems and SGI storage solutions are assisting leading research institutions and scientists around the world to treat and potentially prevent some of the most lethal illnesses."

The Best Practices awards were judged by eight experts from the scientific, IT, and business communities who reviewed a total of 33 submissions from organizations ranging from large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to academic institutions and agencies.

Full details of the 2005 Best Practices winners and entries will be published in the August issue of Bio-IT World. The entire article is available online at www.bio-itworld.com/newsitems/2005/06-05/06-29-05-news-bp-winners.

NCI's Confocal Microscopy Data Analysis
NCI and SGI Bio-IT World award program submission entitled, "Confocal Microscopy Data Analysis: A Real-Time Image Analysis and Visualization Solution" presents results from a research project executed by SGI in collaboration with NCI's Advanced Biomedical Computing Center (ABCC) and NCI's Image Analysis Laboratory (IAL). The project goal was to develop new tools to accelerate the efficiency and workflow for microscopy scientists. The authors presented the Silicon Graphics Prism visualization system solution architecture, showed how it facilitates efficient analysis of large datasets, and presented results of several test cases on microscopy samples provided by NCI for evaluation.

The NCI Advanced Biomedical Computing Center (ABCC) in Frederick, MD, also relies on a 64-processor Altix 3000 server, and a six-processor Altix 350 system, all running the Linux® operating environment and powered by Intel® Itanium® 2 processors. The installation is part of a growing list of SGI servers supporting the nation's preeminent scientists at NCI and the National Institutes of Health. ABCC researchers depend on the Altix system's scalability and its ability to handle large memory problems, such as modeling anti-cancer drug interactions with known tumor targets or analyzing genomic/preotomic data. The Altix system, installed in September 2003, is used to enhance earlier installation of SGI servers. All servers have access to nine terabytes of shared disk space on a 10TB SGI® InfiniteStorage TP9400 Fibre Channel RAID array, whose disk space is shared as a SGI InfiniteStorage CXFS™ clustered filesystem.

For over two decades, SGI continues to deliver high performance servers, visual systems, and storage environments that enable computational biologists and bioinformaticists to run a wide range of applications with industry-leading performance and results. Whether the research includes gene sequence analysis, cluster comparisons, homology modeling, or genetic algorithms, SGI offers the leading tools to build the most dependable, scalable and cost-effective systems for running these applications.

SILICON GRAPHICS | The Source of Innovation and Discovery™
SGI, also known as Silicon Graphics, Inc. (NYSE: SGI), 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.

Silicon Graphics, SGI, Altix, the SGI cube and the SGI logo are registered trademarks, and Silicon Graphics Prism, OpenGL Volumizer, CXFS, and The Source of Innovation and Discovery are trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries worldwide. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. Intel and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

¹ SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation) - Frederick, MD, is the operations and technical support contractor for the NCI in Frederic, MD, operating the NCI-Frederick campus.