SGI® Rackable™ Server Benchmarks As World's Most Energy-Efficient Platform

High Performance SGI Rackable Half-Depth Server Shatters SPEC Performance Records While Easily Surpassing Competition; Delivers Highest Performance-Per-Watt in Class

FREMONT, CA. — January 31, 2011 — SGI (NASDAQ: SGI), a trusted leader in technical computing, today announced that a single SGI Rackable C2005-TY6 server achieved a world record for performance-per-watt on the SPECpower®_ssj2008 benchmark, an industry-standard measurement of energy efficiency of volume server class and multi-node class computers. C2005-TY6 server easily outperformed comparable systems from Dell, IBM and HP.

C2005-TY6 outperformed its nearest competitors in two important areas, including power at 100 percent load (watts), and the overall performance-per-watt metric (ssj_ops/watt). Complete SPECpower_ssj2008 results are posted at www.spec.org.

A single SGI Rackable half-depth C2005-TY6 server beat Dell, IBM and HP with the lowest power of only 226 watts at 100 percent load and the highest performance-per-watt of 3,077 ssj_ops/watt.

"C2005-TY6 server's unprecedented energy efficiency directly translates into meaningful business benefits for data centers," said Conor Malone, vice president of engineering at SGI. "The breakthrough SPECpower_ssj2008 results prove that SGI Rackable half-depth servers continue to lead in power and cooling efficiency by having the flexibility to incorporate best of breed components from partners like Intel."

The tested C2005-TY6 server was powered by a total of two six-core Intel® Xeon® 5670 processors, 12GB memory, one Intel® 32GB SLC flash drive, Microsoft® Windows 2008 R2 Server Enterprise Edition operating system, and ran six instances of IBM J9 Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

"We are delighted that SGI has chosen the Intel® Server Board S5500WB for its Rackable system," said Lisa Graff, vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Platforms & Services Division at Intel. "Intel strives to design world-class server building blocks to help customers like SGI achieve world-record results."

The C2005-TY6 half-depth rackmount server, which will be available in March 2011, has the following notable power efficiency features:

• Intel Server Board S5500WB optimized for performance-per-watt by incorporating spread-core processor/memory layout, high efficiency VR's, comprehensive temperature monitoring, and extensive characterization and tuning across hardware and software;
• Flash-enabled technology that reduces overall power consumption up to a factor of eight compared to 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch HDDs;
• Support for low-voltage processors from Intel that run at the same clock rates as their higher-voltage counterparts but consume less energy;
• P-states and C-states that allow the CPU frequency and power to dynamically change based on the workload;
• Support by SGI Management Center which, on servers with Intel® Intelligent Power Node Manager, provides power and thermal monitoring and policy based power management;
• CPUs and DIMMs that support active power management that allows for significant power savings at idle and moderate loads, but can run at peak frequency when needed;
• Unused memory channels that can be dynamically placed into a low power state;
• Option of disabling unused serial, USB and Ethernet ports.

About SGI
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Contact Information:

Schwartz Communications, Inc.
Gina Titus
415-512-0770
SGIPR@schwartz-pr.com

© 2011 SGI. SGI and Rackable are registered trademarks or trademarks of Silicon Graphics International Corp. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective holders.

SPEC® and SPECpower® are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC).

Editor's Note: SPECpower_ssj2008 competitive results accessed from www.spec.org as of January 25, 2011.

The comparisons above are based on the best results published on a single server with same processor SKUs for the following hardware vendors:

1) SGI Rackable C2005-TY6 configuration: 2 processors, 2.93 GHz (Turbo disabled, HT enabled) six-core Intel Xeon X5670 CPUs, 24 Threads, 12 GB memory, 6 instances of IBM J9 VM. Scores achieved in SGI tests on December 6, 2010: 59.1 watts @ active idle, 226 watts @ 100% load, 3,077 ssj_ops/watt.

2) Dell PowerEdge R710 configuration: 2 processors, 2.93 GHz (Turbo disabled, HT enabled) six-core Intel Xeon X5670 CPUs, 24 Threads, 12 GB memory, 6 instances of IBM J9 VM. Scores achieved in Dell tests on July 2, 2010: 64 watts @ active idle, 232 watts @ 100% load, 3,034 ssj_ops/watt.

3) IBM Power x3650 M3 configuration: 2 processors, 2.93 GHz (HT enabled) six-core Intel Xeon X5670 CPUs, 24 Threads, 12 GB memory, 6 instances of IBM J9 VM. Scores achieved in IBM tests on March 10, 2010: 66.3 watts @ active idle, 238 watts @ 100% load, 2,927 ssj_ops/watt.

4) HP ProLiant DL380 G6 configuration: 2 processors, 2.93 GHz (Turbo disabled, HT enabled) six-core Intel Xeon X5670 CPUs, 24 Threads, 24 GB memory, 6 instances of IBM J9 VM. Scores achieved in HP tests on March 29, 2010: 68.1 watts @ active idle, 249 watts @ 100% load, 2,780 ssj_ops/watt.