Revolutionary Platform Delivers New Levels of Performance and Versatility in a Blade Design
Revolutionary standards-based design delivers versatile performance for the most demanding HPC workloads and features new technology that will drive future HPC breakthroughs. SGI Altix 4700 features performance density, 'plug and solve' configurability and continues Altix systems' lead in price-performance for high end servers in a blade form factor.
Altix 4700 Advantages
Modular blade design for superior performance density and "plug and solve" configurability
SGI Altix 4700 platform is comprised of modular blades - interchangeable compute, memory, I/O and special purpose blades for 'plug and solve' configuration flexibility. The innovative blade-to-NUMAlink™ architecture enables users to mix and match eight standardized blade choices, for perfect system right-sizing. The compact blade packaging of the Altix 4700 rack also provides excellent performance density.
Designed for future upgrade, expansion and integration of next-generation HPC technologies
SGI Altix 4700 supports Dual-Core Intel® Itanium® Processors and offers easy upgrade or expansion of CPU, memory, I/O or visualization capabilities. This flexible growth path makes it possible for customers to adjust system configurations to meet current and changing requirements easily and cost-effectively; minimum risk for maximum productivity.
Scalable system size for simplified programming, low-cost administration and excellent sustained performance for cluster or shared memory applications
SGI Altix 4700 incorporates the shared-memory NUMAflex® architecture, which simplifies software development, workload management and system administration. It supports up to 512 sockets or 1024 cores under one instance of Linux and as much as 128TB of globally shared memory. Supporting these powerful capabilities is the NUMAlink™ interconnect, which leads the industry in bandwidth and latency for superior performance on cluster applications. The SGI Altix 4700 represents a versatile solution for shared or distributed memory applications of any scale.
Step into Multi-paradigm computing - taking HPC beyond the Limits of Moore's Law
SGI Altix 4700 Platform also integrates SGI's Peer I/O technology which enables high-speed access to SGI's large shared memory for all system components. Through peer I/O, SGI Altix 4700 is the first SGI platform designed to support new computing paradigms, such as reconfigurable computing through SGI RASC™ technology, that will take over where Moore's Law leaves off.
Standards-based platform and blade form factor reduces costs while delivering uncompromised performance on Linux
Like its predecessors, the SGI Altix 4700 platform has been designed specifically for technical users based on industry standard CPU's, memory and I/O. This infrastructure is supported by a complete HPC solution stack running on industry standard Linux® operating systems with the choice of Novell® SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 or Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® Advanced Server 4 operating systems. SGI® ProPack™ software provides the tools and enabling applications to optimize performance for Altix systems running SUSE LINUX OS. All of this is supplied and supported by SGI for one-stop support.
DNA strand image courtesy of Tripos, Inc.
