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Upgraded Computational Power Enables Advanced Scientific Projects

The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) today announced that it has completed the largest installation to date of IBM's high-performance switch. As part of the center's new DataStar supercomputer now in initial production, the new system represents the next-generation solution of IBM technology for SDSC.

"This new IBM switch technology is very impressive," said Phil Andrews, director high-performance computing at SDSC. "We now have a high performance switch that is commensurate with the power of the latest processors. This allows for the creation of true systems for capability computing as opposed to loosely coupled clusters."

By migrating to an IBM eServer™ pSeries® infrastructure of POWER4™ systems running the AIX 5L™ operating system, SDSC increased their teraflop performance and scalability, enabling the center's researchers to work on numerous projects for institutions and academic centers across the country simultaneously. As a result, SDSC researchers now have a much more advanced computational source to power their programs. One such program, which maps billions of stars across the universe, could lead to a number of scientific breakthroughs in astronomy and space travel.

"The work being done by the SDSC is important to the future of astronomy and space travel. And now with dramatically increased performance of the new DataStar system, SDSC can take its research to the next level," said Dave Turek, Vice President, Deep Computing. "IBM's Power Architecture™ technology is truly a leader in 64-bit technology in the market today and our customers continue to take advantage of its offering through our reliable, scalable and robust pSeries systems."

SDSC serves a national community of scientific researchers through the center's allocated user system and the National Science Foundation's Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI) program.

About SDSC

The mission of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) is to innovate, develop, and deploy technology to advance science. SDSC is involved in an extensive set of collaborations and activities at the intersection of technology and science whose purpose is to enable and facilitate the next generation of scientific advances. Founded in 1985 and primarily funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), SDSC is an organized research unit of the University of California, San Diego. With a staff of more than 400 scientists, software developers, and support personnel, SDSC is an international leader in data management, grid computing, biosciences, geosciences, and visualization. For more information, see www.sdsc.edu.

IBM, the e-business logo, eServer, pSeries, Power Architecture, POWER4, are trademarks or registered trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States and/or other countries

Media contact:

Greg Lund,
SDSC
858-534-8314, greg@sdsc.edu

Ashley Wood,
858-534-8363, awood@sdsc.edu