SGI enables scientists and engineers to accelerate scientific research with innovative, interactive capabilities that allow them to focus on algorithm development while benefiting from the power of high performance computing.

Tools like MATLAB and Mathematica have long been used on desktop computers to interactively develop and debug algorithms. However the size and complexity of the problem that could be analyzed was limited by the memory capacity and compute power of the desktop system, so users would often spend months recoding algorithms into C, C++, Fortran and MPI to take advantage of high performance computers.

The SGI® Star-P™ platform provides an interactive parallel computing platform - a bridge between interactive desktop applications and HPC computers. With the interactive SGI Star-P platform and SGI® Altix® servers, researchers can combine the interactive capabilities of their desktop systems with powerful parallel computing resources. This solution brings the following benefits to anyone who uses interactive mathematical modeling tools:

• Dramatically reduced application prototyping and development time
• Significantly improved quality of applications with more opportunities to refine algorithms
• Increased model sizes and algorithm complexity
• Reduced need for specialized high performance computing programmers
• Reduced time to market

Additionally, for applications that take advantage of x86 cluster architecture, SGI® Altix® XE servers deliver top performance and superior configuration flexibility in a cost-effective solution that is easy to build and deploy.

For additional information:

• SGI Star-P
• SGI Star-P Software Data Sheet (PDF 274K)
• SGI® InfiniteStorage Solutions for The Sciences: Reducing Time to Insight through Sophisticated Data Management (PDF 4.2M)