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SGI Named 2012 Computerworld Honors Laureate

Dépèche transmise le 2 avril 2012 par Business Wire

SGI Named 2012 Computerworld Honors Laureate

FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SGI (NASDAQ:SGI), the trusted leader in technical computing, announced today that IDG's Computerworld Honors® Program has named the company a 2012 Laureate. The recognition is based on SGI’s work with NASA and the Pleiades supercomputer installed at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. The annual award program honors visionary applications of information technology promoting positive social, economic and educational change.

“NASA scientists and engineers are able to attack problems at a scale that was not possible prior to the Pleiades installation, and the system’s evolution continues to reduce the time to solution on problems ranging from climate simulation to launch vehicle design.”

NAS is NASA’s primary supercomputing center, and Pleiades (named after the astronomical open star cluster of the same name) is part of the High-End Computing Capability (HECC) Project, which provides users with an integrated computing environment including both the computational resources and services supporting efficient use of the systems. Pleiades, which ranks seventh on the current TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers, represents NASA's state-of-the-art technology for meeting the agency's supercomputing requirements, enabling NASA scientists and engineers to conduct modeling and simulation for NASA missions.

“Pleiades has been a game changer at NASA,” said William Thigpen, HECC deputy project manager at Ames. “NASA scientists and engineers are able to attack problems at a scale that was not possible prior to the Pleiades installation, and the system’s evolution continues to reduce the time to solution on problems ranging from climate simulation to launch vehicle design.”

The system architecture is manufactured by SGI, and consists of 112,896 total cores (32,768 additional GPU cores), with a total memory of 191 terabytes. The newest generation of supercomputer, SGI® ICE™ X, continues the heritage of previous ICE designs in implementing hierarchical management and hypercube networking topologies. This allows easy system expansion over time, including over multiple generations, with no system down time while expansion is taking place. This feature has saved NASA over two million hours of compute time during previous system upgrades.

“NASA is at the leading edge of high performance computing and touches the lives of billions of people worldwide on a daily basis,” said Franz Aman, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at SGI. “From health care and hurricane tracking, analysis of Earth’s oceans and seas, to the quest for life on other planets, scientists and citizens alike depend on Pleiades and eagerly await the next discovery enabled by this system. We’re honored to be recognized for our work with NASA, and share this award in spirit with them and the teams there who benefit us all.”

Pleiades provides world-class high-end computing, storage, and associated services to enable scientists and engineers supporting NASA efforts to broadly and productively employ large-scale modeling, simulation, and analysis to achieve successful outcomes. The objective of Pleiades is to accelerate and enhance NASA's mission of space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research by continually ensuring optimal use of the most productive high-end computing environment in the world.

“There's no question that technology plays a vital role in driving business forward. It ensures an organization's ability to innovate, communicate and thrive. What the Computerworld Honors Laureates so clearly demonstrate is technology's role in moving society forward. Computerworld acknowledges and applauds the outstanding work being done by individuals and organizations, such as SGI, who have successfully used technology to improve the quality of our lives and that of future generations," said John Amato, vice president/publisher of Computerworld.

The Computerworld Honors Program awards will be presented on June 4, 2012 in Washington, D.C.

About The Computerworld Honors Program

Founded by International Data Group (IDG) in 1988, The Computerworld Honors Program is governed by the not-for-profit Computerworld Information Technology Awards Foundation. Computerworld Honors is the longest running global program to honor individuals and organizations that use information technology to promote positive social, economic and educational change. Additional information about the program and a Global Archive of past Laureate case studies, as well as oral histories of Leadership Award recipients can be found at the Computerworld Honors website: http://events.computerworld.com/2012Honors.

About SGI

SGI, the trusted leader in technical computing, is focused on helping customers solve their most demanding business and technology challenges. Visit sgi.com for more information.

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