Team McLaren Mercedes Power Ahead with SGI

SGI solution helps Formula One front runners Team McLaren Mercedes stay ahead

Reading, UK (June 13, 2005)—The Team McLaren Mercedes Formula One team is pleased to announce a new official supplier, Silicon Graphics (SGI) for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) supercomputing, storage and visualization equipment. With a long and unsurpassed history of winning in the highly competitive and cutting edge technological environment of Formula One, Team McLaren Mercedes are a by-word in design excellence.

The Team McLaren Mercedes MP4-20 Formula One cars are designed, developed and manufactured at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, England. The team's engineers are continually challenged to shave all important fractions of seconds from the lap times of the MP4-20's, one area where this improvement can be gained is through the constant development of aerodynamics.

Team McLaren Mercedes use CFD to simulate the flow over their Formula One racing cars primarily in order to develop the shape of the car. One objective is to create downforce. This helps in providing enhanced grip, predominantly during cornering (braking, turn-in and exit) when the driver relies on grip to carry as much speed as possible through the corner.

Another major objective is to minimise the drag of the airflow around the car to maximise top-end speed. CFD can also help the understanding and insight into the behaviour of the car in yaw (cross-wind, cornering), steer (with the front wheels turned) and roll (ride-height variations).

"SGI enables us to develop design solutions using CFD simulations, with the aim of providing improved performance on the track," said Jonathan Neale, Managing Director, McLaren Racing. "In obtaining the integrated SGI Altix and Prism solution we will be able to deliver fast and more accurate CFD simulations."

With SGI® Altix®, the aerodynamics team will be able to model the car - 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.

The Silicon Graphics 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.

"Formula One racing is all about winning and pushing the boundaries of what's technically possible, each season - SGI are doing just that in the field of CFD supercomputing - it's a great partnership," said Tim Butchart, Managing Director UK and Ireland, SGI.

The last 20 years have seen McLaren become one of the most successful teams in Formula One. The team has won a total of 140 Grands Prix, including Monaco 2005 on May 22nd.

McLaren Racing
McLaren Racing, the company behind the Team McLaren Mercedes team, has won eleven Formula One Drivers' Championships and eight Formula One Constructors' Championships. McLaren has competed in Formula One since 1966 and has proven to be one of the most successful Formula One teams of all time with 140 Grands Prix wins. To date, McLaren has raced in 585 Grands Prix. The McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, England, the McLaren Group's new headquarters, has been developed on a 50 hectare site. The facility includes design studios, laboratories, research and testing facilities, electronics development, machine shops and production facilities for the Team McLaren Mercedes Formula One cars and the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. www.mclaren.com

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.

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