SGI Claims World’s Largest Windows Platform with Intel Xeon Architecture

By DE Editors

SGI has announced record-scaling certification and availability of SGI Altix UV with Windows Server 2008 R2. This certification represents the largest and most powerful certified instance to date of Windows Server, according to SGI.

“Altix UV can now scale Windows Server technology to record levels,” says SGI CEO Mark J. Barrenechea. “Customers can deploy with confidence their mission-critical software on larger scale hardware platforms supported by Microsoft and SGI with Intel Xeon-based processors. We are continuing our joint development work with Microsoft, and expect to scale Windows Server even further in the very near term.”

With Windows Server 2008 R2 availability on the Altix UV shared-memory computer, the entire catalog of Windows applications, including Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 for data warehousing and data mining tools built with Business Intelligence Development Studio, can now take advantage of the scalability of Altix UV. This solution allows users to expand analytics and simulation capabilities with the addressability of its large memory. As a result,  larger quantities of data can be analyzed and more real-time business decisions made possible. Technical applications including MathWorks MATLAB and Wolfram Mathematica 8 also benefit from Altix UV’s large compute capability in a single and easily maintained instance of Windows Server, according to the company.

“Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition on SGI Altix UV provides enterprises that run demanding, large-scale applications with enhanced capabilities that translate into meaningful business benefits,” says Mike Neil, general manager Windows Server at Microsoft. “The combination of SGI’s fast and scalable Altix UV and Windows Server 2008 R2 scalability raises the boundaries of application performance for our users to new heights.”

Certified running standard Windows Server 2008 R2, the Altix UV 100 has 128 cores of Intel Xeon processor 7500 series and 1TB of memory. Altix UV now supports applications such as SQL Server Data Warehousing and Excel Services in Microsoft SharePoint 2010.

For information, visit SGI.

Sources:  Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.