University of Waterloo Leverages SGI Technology for Ocean Wave Modeling and Advanced Mathematics Research

Top Canadian University Relies on Large, Shared-Memory Processing of SGI Altix and InfiniteStorage Systems for Pure and Applied Math

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (November 21, 2006) — Professors and researchers in a growing number of national and international universities are harnessing the shared-memory processing power of SGI (NASDAQ: SGIC) high-performance compute technology to explore and solve a wide range of complex mathematical problems in pure and applied math. The University of Waterloo (UW), in Ontario, Canada, recently upgraded the processing power of two complete, turn-key SGI® Altix® systems with SGI® InfiniteStorage arrays for a variety of fields, including ocean wave modeling and computer sciences.

The Mathematics Faculty at UW currently uses two SGI Altix systems. The University has benefited from the ease of scalability of the Altix and has added processors, memory and storage as their needs have grown since the initial installation in 2004. UW currently has one SGI® Altix® 3700 system with 64 Intel® Itanium® 2 processors and a total of 4.6TB in two SGI InfiniteStorage TP9100 arrays, and one SGI ® Altix® 350 system, recently upgraded to 16 processors from the original dual Intel Itanium 2 processor configuration.

The Fluids group in Applied Math uses the SGI Altix 350 system for ocean wave modeling, and writes their own home-grown code, which has been enhanced by SGI's tuned numerical libraries. Professor of Applied Mathematics Kevin G. Lamb, currently department chair, specifically requested the SGI Altix 350 for high-resolution computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, running code he originally wrote over 15 years ago for his study of internal gravity waves in the ocean.

"I bought the Altix to look at the interaction of stratified tidal flow with bottom topography in the ocean. This process generates internal gravity waves of many different length and time scales, and I needed high resolution to simulate as large a range of scales as possible," said Professor Lamb.

"Over the years I've altered my code considerably and used it on many different computers. When I was in the market for a new computer, I ran my model on a lot of different machines. I tested my code, as well as a number of other things, on an Altix and it was the fastest and most cost-effective of all the machines I was looking at. One thing I found is that making use of SGI's scientific computation library sped up the code significantly. I've been quite happy with the results."

One of the Mathematics groups at UW that first used the SGI Altix 3700 system, when it was originally delivered, is the School of Computer Science. Current fields of research include design and implementation of algorithms for exact solution of linear algebra problems, and exploring pattern information for program visualization tools to aid in the development and debugging of parallel code.

"We chose Altix 3700 because Computer Science specifically wanted Itanium processing for its integer performance compared to other processors. Floating point performance was impressive as well," said Robyn Landers, a software specialist in the Math Faculty Computing Facility, University of Waterloo. "They wanted open-source Linux and shared memory processing. At the time, SGI was the only solution with more than16 processors in a single system image. We were anticipating future expansion, so the modular design of SGI's architecture was very attractive."

With the most recent upgrade in September 2006, the SGI Altix 3700 system has been expanded to a 64-processor machine with 192GB memory, running Novell® SUSE® Linux® Enterprise Server, Version 9. Along with Computer Science, several other groups from the Mathematics Faculty are now using high-performance SGI Altix 3700 technology. These include: Pure Math for number theory and random matrix theory; Combinatorics and Optimization for data mining, optimization of algorithms in both theoretical and physical realms (manufacturing, computer applications); and Applied Math, where mesh-free methods for modeling 3D events (with applications in medicine, climatology and geophysics) are being explored.

"The ready to use, single system performance and flexibility provided by SGI Altix shared memory systems allows mathematics researchers and scientists to explore the largest experimental data sets without doing them piecemeal," said Michael Brown, sciences market segment manager for SGI. "Ever-expanding data sets and simulations in almost all areas of science require reliable and economic solutions that allow researchers to develop new approaches to solving problems and SGI Altix systems have proven time and again that they meet those high performance demands. SGI InfiniteStorage solutions easily scale to back up and share the vast amounts of valuable research that will lead to the biomedical, environmental, and computational innovations of tomorrow."

Professor Lamb purchased an SGI S330 storage array with 5.6TB for the Altix 350 system; the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Science was a significant source of funding. Other purchases and upgrades were made possible by Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Innovation Trust and Canada's National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) "Research Tools and Instruments" grants; a variety of SGI technology was ordered through SGI reseller Helios Oceana.

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