Chunghwa Telecom Makes Major Purchase of SGI Technology

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- SGI (NYSE: SGI), a leading provider of high-performance computing, complex data management and visualization products, solutions and services for technical and creative users, today announced that Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd. has purchased 33 SGI® Origin® 2200 high-performance servers and 84 SGI® TP9100 storage systems for its Multimedia-on-Demand (MOD) project in metropolitan Taipei. The MOD project, one of the largest in the world, will offer 20,000 homes in Taiwan True VOD (TVOD), Near VOD (NVOD), Karaoke-on-Demand (KOD) and LiveTV services. The 84 SGI TP9100 systems supply over 18TB of storage while ensuring excellent value for a high-performance storage array. The SGI® equipment, running Thirdspace(TM) OVS, is installed in Chunghwa Telecom's central site and four regional sites and will deliver a total of 5,565 streams to the 20,000 clients via set-top boxes. SGI received the order last quarter and the systems have shipped over the past two quarters. Chunghwa Telecom, the major provider of traditional telephone, leased-line, Internet and other value-added services throughout Taiwan, describes its Multimedia-on-Demand project as a very high-end system that includes many components that must work together seamlessly, such as video servers, networking, set-top boxes and numerous business, scheduling and billing applications. The SGI® IRIX® OS?based open architecture of the SGI® Origin® family of servers was key to the company's purchasing decision and is proving to be the bedrock of the successful installation and integration of the project. ``The SGI Origin family servers provide the high performance and scalability to deliver the massive amounts of media throughput and network I/O needed to deliver high-quality services to our subscribers, using half the amount of space of other systems,'' said Dr. Yen, Chain-Chin, Managing Director, Multimedia Department, Chunghwa Telecom. ``As we prepare for launch, the outlook is splendid. The tight coupling of SGI Origin family technology with the bandwidth of the TP9100 storage array and Thirdspace OVS software was the exact solution we needed to deliver our MOD project to Taiwan.'' Using its own solutions, Chunghwa Telecom completed two pilot runs several years ago. In 2001, the company chose the robust SGI Origin family servers and TP9100 storage systems for their initial install of 10,000 clients, which is expected to be completed in early 2002. During 2002, Chunghwa Telecom expects to expand to the full scale of 20,000 clients and beyond, as client demand grows. ``SGI is very pleased to be chosen as the technology that will put Chunghwa Telecom at the forefront of true video-on-demand,'' said Bill La Rosa, senior vice president, Intercontinental Field Operations, SGI. ``This project utilizing SGI Origin family servers and storage arrays acknowledges the scalability of the SGI architecture and underscores our commitment to the rapidly expanding Asian market. We look forward to serving Chunghwa Telecom's needs as it expands into all of Taiwan with the full range of SGI server and storage products that will continue to offer the superior price/performance benefits our systems are known for worldwide.'' SGI Origin family servers and data management solutions are designed exclusively for technical and creative users and offer scalability and performance beyond the capabilities of enterprise computing platforms that are much more expensive. For more information visit www.cht.com.tw/english/ or www.sgi.com