SGI’s New High-Density Cluster Platform

By Doug Barney

Today SGI (in the old days we called it Silicon Graphics) announced a new SUSE Linux 10-based clustered computing system. Coded named “Project Carlsbad, the blade server line is based on Intel Xeon dual and quad core processors, and is aimed largely at engineering analysis applications.

According to Himanshu Misra, an executive in SGI’s Engineering Analysis Segment (SGI; Sunnyvale, CA), the new line can expand as processing needs intensify – up to 512 cores per rack. That equals a snappy 6 TFLOPS. That’s some serious crunching.

The SGI Altix ICE system has a cable free chassis uses a minimum of cables, has an Infiniband backplane, and hot swappable cooling and power. Water cooling is offered as an option. The system doesn’t come with its own disks, but instead uses NAS-based storage, Misra said in an interview.

SGI gained much of its density by using Intel’s Atoka systems boards, which SGI co-designed.

When it comes to HPC, which OS do you trust, Linux or Windows? Let us know at [email protected].

For more information visit SGI here.

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