Altix UV Achieves World Record Performance with New Intel® Xeon® Processor 7500 Series

FREMONT, Calif. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — March 30, 2010 — SGI (NASDAQ: SGI), a global leader in HPC and data center solutions, today announced the immediate availability of Altix UV 10, a new high performance quad-socket server that enhances the range of data-intensive applications addressed by the Altix® UV product family. SGI also announced it has submitted world record breaking SPEC benchmark performance results with Altix® UV 1000 with Intel Xeon processor 7500 series (codenamed “Nehalem-EX”).

The entire Altix UV product line (Altix UV 10, 100 and 1000) uniquely exploits the increased performance and scalability of the Intel Xeon processor 7500 series released today by Intel Corporation.

“The Altix UV shared memory platform will enable business and technical applications to scale and perform at levels never before seen in our industry,” said Mark J. Barrenechea, SGI CEO. “Altix UV 10 is a key addition to the Altix UV family, allowing customers a cost effective entry to large-memory systems.”

Altix UV 10 is a 4U, standard-depth rackmount system with up to 32 processor cores and 512GB of shared memory in 64 DIMM slots. The new quad-socket model provides particularly high performance for a server in its class when it comes to I/O-bound and memory-bound applications such as in-memory and very large databases. The server supports up to eight hot-swappable 2.5” hard drives and 10 high-bandwidth I/O expansion slots.

Altix UV 10 ideally meets the needs of a diverse set of data-intensive workloads. This includes analytics and CAE applications such as Ansys and MSC Nastran, and applications in high performance computing (HPC) domains such as life sciences and energy. The server’s large-memory support also makes it a solid fit for addressing the data-ingest and pre- and post-processing workloads often found in government and enterprise markets. As well, Altix UV 10 is a compelling virtualization platform for general-purpose enterprise server consolidation.

Altix UV Scalability and Performance Leadership

The Altix UV family is unparalleled in its scalability, with 16 to 2,048 cores with architectural provisioning for up to 262,144 cores, while supporting up to 16 terabytes of global shared memory in a single system image (SSI). The system’s open x86 architecture leverages the latest quad-, six- or eight-core Intel Xeon 7500 series processors, allowing for completely unmodified Novell® SUSE® or Red Hat® Linux® operating systems.

In conjunction with Intel’s processor launch, SGI has submitted performance results for Altix UV on the SPEC CPU2006 integer rate benchmark, which demonstrates that Altix UV is the world’s fastest shared memory system, besting the previous record set by the SGI Altix® 4700 platform. The Altix UV 1000 system that was tested consists of 64 sockets (512 cores) of Intel® Xeon® X5570 processors—just one quarter of the 256 sockets (2,048 cores) that Altix UV supports in a single system image and one-eighth of the 512 sockets (1,024 cores) present in the previously top-ranked SGI Altix 4700 system. SGI published two key benchmark results:

• SPECint_rate_base2006 — Altix UV 1000 scored 10,400, unseating the previous leader, SGI Altix 4700, with the result of 9,030.
• SPECfp_rate_base2006 — Altix UV 1000 scored 6,840, making it the top-ranked x86 architecture result and the second highest overall result behind the top-ranked SGI Altix 4700, which scored 10,600 with eight times as many processors.

“Altix UV is the industry’s most scalable shared memory system. Addressing a wide range of application needs, Altix UV’s innovative architecture will help achieve real world breakthroughs, and we are proud to have collaborated closely with SGI to make this accomplishment a reality on Intel processor technology,” said Richard Dracott, general manager of high performance computing at Intel. “With the addition of Altix UV 10, SGI is uniquely well positioned to deliver Intel Xeon processor 7500 series systems to HPC, enterprise and Internet markets.”

Three Altix UV Models

• Altix UV 10 — The new Altix UV 10 is one of the highest performing quad-socket rackmount servers available and is the entry-level member of the Altix UV family. Altix UV 10 provides up to 32 cores and 512GB of shared memory for a maximum of 289 gigaflops per server.
• Altix UV 100 — Altix UV 100 addresses the mid-range market based on an industry-standard 19" rackmount 3U form factor. This model scales to 96 sockets (768 cores) and 6TB of shared memory in two racks for a maximum of 6.9 teraflops.
• Altix UV 1000 — Altix UV 1000 ships as a fully integrated cabinet-level solution with up to 256 sockets (2,048 cores) and 16TB of shared memory in four racks. This model scales to 18.5 teraflops with the Intel® Xeon® X7560 processor, all with a single system image.