NEWS BRIEFS

The Woodlands, TEXAS — Veritas DGC, a leading technology partner serving the world-wide geophysical community, has installed their third NEC SX-5 Series parallel vector supercomputer. The newest VDGC installation is located at their geophysical processing facility in London. The Company recently installed SX-5 supercomputers at both their Houston and Singapore centers. VDGC currently operates 21 seismic data processing centers in major oil and gas markets worldwide. The NEC SX-5, one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, is a backbone of Veritas’ global computing resource.

The system in Singapore is a 6 processor 32 GB main memory, model while those in London and Houston are 8 processors with 32 and 64 GB of main memory, respectively. Each individual processor has 8 GFLOPS peak performance and can process huge volumes of 3D and 4D seismic data through complex sequences in significantly reduced time frames as compared to other platforms offered in the industry.

VDGC has developed state-of-the-art proprietary seismic data processing systems providing a wide range of functionality designed to process data from all acquisition environments. All software is UNIX-based and capable of running on hardware platforms from workstations to the SX-5 supercomputers.

With many platforms to compare against, VDGC has continuously reinforced their belief in the processing benefits of NEC’s parallel vector systems from their first installation of an SX-4 Series machine in 1996 to what is today their sixth SX Series system acquisition. With such continuous customer support, NEC’s parallel vector supercomputers have become the world’s leading systems to provide solutions capability for very large computationally and I/O intensive applications.

Complementing the leap in data processing horsepower provided by the NEC systems, VDGC operates four state-of-the-art data visualization centers. These advanced interpretation facilities represent a new era in the way exploration data are fundamentally viewed and interpreted. The centers offer multi-disciplinary exploration teams the ability to display and interactively manipulate large volumes of complex 3D seismic data, together with many different types of geoscientific data. This provides the benefit of different perspectives to create better, faster interpretations and solutions.

Veritas DGC also owns one of the largest libraries of non-exclusive land and marine seismic data in the industry. The VDGC library consists of Company-owned 3D and 2D seismic data available for license to multiple clients on a non-exclusive basis. Because of the relatively high cost of acquiring and processing 3D seismic data, many oil and gas companies regularly participate in multi-client surveys to reduce their overall geophysical expenses. For further information about Veritas DGC visit http://www.veritasdgc.com . For information on the SX-5 Series Parallel Vector Supercomputer see http://www.hstc.necsyl.com .

VERITAS DGC Inc., offering the oil and gas industry cutting edge technologies and geophysical services designed to manage exploration risk and enhance drilling and production success worldwide. These services include seismic survey planning and design, seismic data acquisition in all environments, data processing, data visualization, data interpretation, reservoir characterization, data archiving, data management, and extensive non-exclusive seismic data library surveys worldwide. With over 35 years of operating experience, more than 3,000 employees in 17 countries on six continents, and revenues of US$353 million for fiscal 2000, Veritas is one of the world’s leading providers of advanced geophysical technologies. Veritas is traded publicly under the ticker symbol VTS on the New York and Toronto Stock Exchanges

NEC Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, was established in 1899 and today is one of the world’s oldest and foremost providers of computers, communications equipment, electron devices, and related technologies and products. NEC has taken the lead and set the standards and new levels of capability for supercomputing, multimedia, communications systems and telephone products, and electron devices. In design, manufacturing, and research, NEC is consistently among the world leaders in accomplishment. Worldwide, there are 152,000 NEC employees. There are over 3000 in Europe and over 8000 in North America. NEC is truly an international, multinational company uniquely able to satisfy the needs for high performance computing. NEC worldwide sales in the last fiscal year were $US48 billion. Of this revenue, 45% came from computer products, 31% from communications products, and 23% from electron devices.

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