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By Chris O'Neal - NEC Solutions America Introduced A New Brand for Itanium 2-based Systems at SC2002. To find Out More, Supercomputing Online Spoke with Dave McAllister, Marketing Director, 64-bit Systems for NEC Solutions America. Supercomputing Online: Please give us a summary on your company’s large scale Itanium 2 servers. McAllister: NEC Solutions unveiled a new brand name in North America for its 64-bit, Intel Itanium 2-based computer systems-the Express5800/1000 series (previously known as the TX7 series). Leveraging pioneering technology from its SX series supercomputers and mainframe systems, the new Express5800/1000 series continues NEC Solutions America’s relentless drive to provide technology solutions that offer breakthrough levels of performance, reliability, flexibility and scalability. Because the systems use Intel Itanium 2 processors and NEC’s scalar computing architecture, users are ensured a non-proprietary platform that costs dramatically less than many proprietary computer systems offering less performance. In fact, it’s the highest performance Itanium 2 system available. Our systems have an open systems design for the compute intensive market. The flexible operating systems allow customers a choice to run Linux. This introduction extends NEC commitment to the high performance computing community. The new Itanium 2-based systems from NEC Solutions America open the door to new ways of improving performance. Itanium 2 processors combined with NEC scalar computing technology make it possible to address significantly larger amounts of memory than 32-bit systems, and to address memory faster than has been previously possible with 64-bit systems offering less processor scalability. LINPACK benchmark scores for a 32-way Express5800/1000 server achieved 101.77 GFLOPS, the highest performance rating to date achieved by a 32-way Intel-based system. An IBM p690 POWER4 32CPU (1.3GHz) achieved 95.26 GFLOPS. This outstanding computing ability puts NEC’s server squarely into data-center applications and other data intensive and computationally intense environments such as scientific research and engineering analysis. At SC2002, NEC will demonstrate the incredible capabilities of the new series in our booth. The raw computing power of up to 32 processors, flexible partitioning, and the capability of running different operating systems simultaneously gives users many new options for server consolidation and expansion. The ability to consolidate server farms onto a more powerful platform will greatly simplify network management and reduce overall operations costs. The Express5800/1000 series may be partitioned at the hardware level, enabling each subsystem to operate as an independent computer system. It is possible to divide the 32-CPU system into eight sub-systems, each of which contains four CPU’s, and let them each operate separately. In this way it is possible to allocate processor capacity according to workload status, resulting in flexible system operation and guaranteed security. STREAMS benchmark tests performed by NEC Solutions America demonstrate linear scaling capabilities to 32 processors (8 cells, 4 processors per cell) with no overhead added as the number of processors is increased. The scaling capability, in conjunction with the performance of the Intel Itanium 2 processor family, clearly positions the Express5800/1000 series as a significant HPC platform. Business and scientific communities are demonstrating great interest in the new possibilities offered from a 32-processor system. The Express5800/1000 series represents enormous potential for end users to take leadership roles in developing new solutions that can leverage existing industry-standard technologies. NEC’s expertise in supercomputing, mainframe systems and fault tolerant technology have all contributed to the inherent reliability of the NEC Express5800/1000 series design. The Express5800/1000 series is designed with redundant components, leading to a system with extremely high levels of availability in systems with up to 32-processors. All models provide technology to enhance hardware reliability, as well as offering both local and remote “phone home” error reporting and servicing. Components such as fans and power supplies are offered with N+1 redundancy. When combined with hot swap and hot plug capabilities, the Express5800/1000 series provides enterprise class reliability, availability and serviceability. Supercomputing Online: Why Intel Itanium 2 processors? McAllister: First of all, the Itanium 2 processor has broad OEM, OS and software support. There are approximately 20 OEMs, including 10 high-end 8-32P+ systems over the next year. Windows, Unix, Linux OSs; 100+ apps are in production, and 100s in development. Secondly, customers have investment protection. Itanium 2 processor is compatible with future products. Also, Itanium 2 based servers to offer greater than 50% higher transaction processing performance than Sun servers at lower costs. And there are approximately 500,000 hours of Intel validation performed on the Itanium architecture. Furthermore, Itanium 2 processors has the largest cache, most registers, execution units and more instructions/cycle than any RISC processor. Supercomputing Online: Why Linux first? McAllister: The initial target markets are CAE, R&D, EDA, and CAD. Linux has functionality such as: Kernel basic features, Large scale server features, Program development support, and ISV software recruiting. There are contributions to the community; OSDL member and open source projects with other vendors like Linux on Large Systems Foundry – Atlas Project. We will have a .NET system available when O/S is available. Supercomputing Online would like to thank Dave McAllister and Tomoo Wakugawa, Manager Business Planning IA-64 for NEC Solutions (America).