APPLICATIONS
Itanium Solutions Alliance Honors Six Altix Users for Innovative Use of Itanium
- Written by: Writer
- Category: APPLICATIONS
- Imperial College, London. The National Service for Computational Chemistry Software (NSCCS) is sponsored by Imperial College and provides researchers with access to 20 different software applications. Recently, escalating needs were fast outpacing its aging compute resources. After an investment in a powerful shared-memory SGI Altix system driven by 224 Intel Itanium 2 cores, NSCCS users now have access to four times the number of processors as before, an improvement that translates to shorter time to solution and the ability to compute problems that before were not even feasible. (Humanitarian Innovation finalist.)
- Interactive Supercomputing, Inc. (ISC). Researchers at the National Cancer Institute mine a vast public database of genomic information for potential discoveries. On a desktop, MATLAB-based statistical analyses took more than two days to compute, but using ISC's Star-P software to transparently execute the MATLAB algorithms on an SGI Altix system, the computations are done in 15 minutes or less. That acceleration is significant to researchers looking to continually extend the reach of their studies. (Humanitarian Innovation finalist.)
- McLaren Racing. McLaren Racing needed a system that could scale to meet new challenges relating to the aerodynamics of all aspects of the car including wings, floor and topbody. The HPC power of the Itanium 2-based SGI Altix allowed McLaren Racing to reach exacting Formula 1 standards and timescales. The Formula 1 CFD models are up to 10 times larger than typical industrial CFD projects. By automating much of the process, the SGI Altix systems have been able to accelerate work on the car model many times over. (Enterprise Business Application finalist.)
- Stanford University. To improve available treatments for cardiovascular disease, Stanford researchers developed a software solution that incorporates computational mechanics and scientific visualization. That combination that requires the kind of exceptional floating-point performance found in Intel Itanium 2 processors and SGI Altix systems. Now, even complex computations can be performed quickly and accurately enough to guide treatment decisions for often life-threatening ailments. (Humanitarian Innovation finalist.)
"The Innovation Contest submissions operating on SGI Altix servers showed that exciting and innovative computing on Itanium-based systems is taking place in sectors ranging from pharmaceutical research to weather forecasting," said Mark K. Smith, Innovation Contest judge and managing director of the Gelato Federation. "In the future, these data-intensive deployments will continue to evolve and Itanium 2-based systems will continue to grow and scale to the needs of innovative users." "SGI applauds the remarkable work of these researchers, and we are delighted that they have been honored by the Itanium Solutions Alliance," said Ravi Pendakanti, director of marketing, SGI. "Powered by Intel Itanium 2 processors, SGI Altix systems regularly help scientists and engineers achieve what just a short time ago was considered impossible. The achievements of these visionaries illustrate that SGI Altix truly delivers Innovation for Results."