ENGINEERING
Oil and Gas Exploration Efforts Strengthened by Linux NetworX Cluster
SALT LAKE CITY, UT -- Linux NetworX, a provider of powerful and easy-to-manage cluster computing solutions, announced today that seismic imaging solutions company GX Technology has purchased an 84-processor Evolocity(TM) computer cluster to be used in its oil and gas exploration efforts. This is the third cluster computer system provided to GX Technology by Linux NetworX. Linux clustering is being increasingly adopted by the oil and gas exploration industry as a stable and powerful high performance computing platform. Companies like GX Technology use Linux NetworX clusters to process extremely complex calculations in efforts to help their customers find and produce petroleum.
"This is the first dual AMD Athlon MP processor-based Linux cluster system, and we are ecstatic that GX has chosen an AMD Athlon processor-based cluster from Linux NetworX," said Lee Little, AMD's director of field marketing for the Americas. "The AMD Athlon MP processor delivers outstanding performance for software applications that help the research efforts of the oil and gas industry."
"The first Linux NetworX cluster we purchased allowed us to process seismic data at a much faster rate than our previous non Linux-based clusters. We anticipate similar results with this next system," said Tony Sabatino, vice president Houston Service Center for GX Technology. GX Technology boasts a Linux cluster of more than 400 processors. "Cluster management is a big concern to us, and is a big part of why we selected the Linux NetworX solution. We need to focus our resources on processing seismic data, not cluster administration. The technical expertise of Linux NetworX, combined with its ClusterWorX(R) management software, allow GX to better focus on our core competencies instead of system maintenance."
Linux NetworX optimized the Evolocity cluster to work with GX Technology's seismic imaging applications to perform processes such as wave equation and Kirchhoff pre-stack depth migration and prestack time migration. The 42-node Evolocity system includes 84 1.2 GHz AMD Athlon(TM) MP processors, with each node containing 1.5 GB of memory, and two 10/100 Ethernet networks for redundancy. GX Technology also utilizes the Linux NetworX ClusterWorX management software tools, and signed an on-going service agreement to ensure system stability.
"Organizations in the oil and gas industry typically have the resources to manage and maintain Linux cluster systems, but today these same organizations are seeing that cluster management tools like ClusterWorX help lower the total cost-of-ownership," said Glen Lowry, president and CEO of Linux NetworX. "With the massive amounts of data GX Technology and other seismic companies are dealing with, it's imperative that the cluster is very stable and operates efficiently all of the time -- ClusterWorX helps administrators accomplish this."
For more information visit www.gxt.com or www.linuxnetworx.com