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June 29, 2007
SGI Unveils Altix ICE Blade Platform
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SUNNYVALE, Calif., June 26 -- SGI today unveiled SGI Altix ICE, a next-generation platform that brings all the advantages of the company's expertise in high-performance computing (HPC) to a tightly integrated, cool-running blade solution. Designed by SGI to close the growing gap between performance and user productivity, SGI Altix ICE 8200 is the first in a new line of bladed servers purpose-built to handle true HPC applications and large scale-out workloads.
Even as it accommodates larger and more varied workloads, SGI Altix ICE doesn't force users to accept compromises in price/performance, power and space efficiency, reliability and manageability. In fact, many of the platform's advantages -- including price/performance -- actually improve as customers add blades and racks.
SGI Altix ICE enables large scale-out environments while minimizing their demands on the data center's space and power. Its ultra-dense rack architecture delivers up to 40 percent more compute performance per floor tile than competing blades. A single SGI Altix ICE 8200 rack can be powered by as many as 512 Intel Xeon processor cores and deliver 6 TFLOPS of performance.
Around the world, SGI is seeing strong customer interest in the new platform. SGI Altix ICE systems have already been installed at a number of customer sites, including the University of Exeter in England and General Atomics in San Diego.
"General Atomics is always looking for the fastest computer because we work with increasingly large models," said Dave Wade, senior systems programming analyst, General Atomics, one of the world's leading resources for high-technology systems development. "But the capacity of our computer room is maxed, and asking it to handle more heat is not cost-effective. With SGI Altix ICE, SGI has delivered the fastest computer with a significant bonus -- an exceptionally small footprint and a very, very low cost in energy. SGI Altix ICE meets every criterion, and allows our scientists and engineers to solve large models in days, rather than weeks."
The new platform's high compute density helps customers overcome more than "server sprawl." SGI Altix ICE features a breakthrough energy-smart design that can save organizations up to $53,000 in annual energy costs for a 10TFLOP system. And it arrives pre-integrated for easy "power up and go" deployment, allowing customers to focus on their work -- not on set-up and administration.
"We repeatedly hear from our customers that first-generation clusters haven't delivered the productivity that their performance potential suggested was possible, creating an increasing gap between peak performance and actual productivity. Meanwhile, those same organizations are struggling to keep pace with the complexities of using, supporting, powering and cooling these systems," said Robert "Bo" Ewald, CEO, SGI. "SGI Altix ICE is a new generation of system architecture -- part cluster, part MPP -- that will deliver more of the potential performance of the system to the end user, and will considerably increase the reliability, availability and serviceability of HPC installations in a smaller, more energy-efficient footprint."
Greater Density, Fewer Headaches
SGI achieved dramatic density improvements by implementing a new, highly integrated version of the "Atoka" board, which SGI co-designed with Intel Corporation. This next-generation board, designed specifically for the HPC market, allows a single SGI Altix ICE 8200 blade to be powered by two Dual- or Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors, and up to 32GB of memory.
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