MILPITAS, Calif., September 14 -- Appro, a leading provider of supercomputing solutions, today announced that the Appro Xtreme-X Supercomputer based on the future Intel Xeon processor E5 Family is selected by the Center for Computational Sciences at the University of Tsukuba.  The award marks the University's second consecutive large-scale HPC system purchase from Appro.

This multi-million dollar system will provide the computational support for advanced scientific research and multi-disciplinary programs covering a wide range of research and education areas, including particle physics, astrophysics, biophysics and climate. The Appro system is well suited to support the University's multi-disciplinary research activities, which often involve the coupling of HPC applications and scientific datasets from diverse scientific fields in the study of new fields of science.

"This award shows that Appro has a strong track record for customer satisfaction and repeat business while helping to elevate the international computational competitiveness of Tsukuba Japanese University," said Earl Joseph, IDC Program Vice President for Technical Computing. "Appro continues to capture more international HPC procurement contracts and with an Appro local Sales Office presence in Japan and Korea, they should be well positioned for the future. IDC projects that supercomputers based on cluster architecture will continue to be the main growth engines for the HPC market, driving server revenue from close to $10 billion dollar a year in 2010 to more than $13 billion a year by 2015."

The Appro Xtreme-X Supercomputer, named "Frontier Computing System" by Center for Computational Sciences at University of Tsukuba is a hybrid system that will consist of two CPUs and 4 GPUs per node with a total of 4,288 CPU cores and 548,864 GPU cores, achieving up to 802.07 Tflops of peak performance based on the future Intel Xeon Processor E5 Family. The supercomputer is designed to optimize floor space, power utilization, and cooling efficiency using Appro's air-cooling technology and techniques, highly efficient power supplies and fans, with integrated system management capabilities. The system is interconnected with dual-rail Mellanox Connect X3 QDR InfiniBand. It will be pre-configured with Appro's HPC Software Stack  to include Appro Cluster Engine (ACE) remote management software delivering diskless operation, fast booting, load balancing and failover capabilities for non-stop operation; all factory integrated and ready to ship with Appro's turn-key System Delivery Integration Services. In addition, to fulfill local service requirements, Appro Japan sales office has joined forces with a local service and support team to provide Tsukuba with extensive on-site professional services installation, training and 24/7 maintenance support. The Appro Xtreme-X Supercomputer will be delivered in December 2011, with user production to begin no later than January, 2012.

"University of Tsukuba choses the next generation Appro Xtreme-X Supercomputer for our Frontier Computing System based on the future Intel Xeon processor for its outstanding product flexibility and price/performance. The system is configured with a mix of 2 CPUs and 4 GPUs per node and dual-rail system interconnect providing low-latency, high performance and high availability computing to support specific application requirements in our next generation of scientific programs. We believe that our target applications create a new frontier in their scientific fields powered by the extreme performance driven by the combination of latest multi-GPU solution with rich I/O bandwidth and the great performance of Intel E5 family," said Taisuke Boku, deputy director of Center for Computational Sciences at University of Tsukuba.

"It is an honor that the Center for Computational Sciences at University of Tsukuba, a frontrunner in Japanese high performance computing, has chosen Appro Xtreme-X again as their trusted supplier of high-end HPC solutions. This repeat win validates our unique architecture and HPC capabilities to address the demanding needs of Japan's computational scientists," said Daniel Kim, CEO of Appro. "We look forward to providing Tsukuba the Appro Xtreme-X Supercomputer delivering cutting-edge hybrid system performance scalability and manageability while helping lead a new beginning of scientific research and climate modeling prediction."

About Appro

Appro is a leading developer of innovative supercomputing solutions. Appro is uniquely positioned to support High-Performance Computing (HPC) markets focusing on medium to large-scale deployments where lower total cost of ownership is essential. Appro accelerates technical applications and business results through outstanding price/performance, power efficient and fast time-to-market solutions based on the latest open standards technologies, innovative cluster tools and management software packaged with HPC professional services and support.  

Appro supercomputing solutions enables scientists and engineers to use data-intensive, capacity, capability and hybrid computing for scientific research, data modeling, engineering simulations, and seismic visualization.  Appro's headquarters is located in Milpitas, CA with offices in Korea, Japan and Houston, TX. To receive automatic Appro news and feature stories, subscribe to Appro RSS feeds at http://www.appro.com, also visit us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ApproSupercomputers or interact with us at http://twitter.com/approhpc.

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Source: Appro