The new family of SGITM OriginTM 3000 series servers and SGITM Onyx® 3000 series graphics systems makes real the long-held dream of truly modular computing. Now, technical and creative computer users can have the same modularity, freedom of choice, and ease of upgrade that people have long benefited from in assembling and enhancing their home-entertainment centers. In unprecedented fashion, SGI delivers on the promise of superior performance, custom configuration, resiliency, and investment protection.
As Ben Passarelli, SGI's director of Server Product Marketing, says, "With modular computing, customers can buy precisely what they need, when they need it, with the confidence that they will be able to add the late-breaking technologies of the future to what they already have."
A Superior Architecture
The newly announced SGITM 3000 family of systems marks the return of the company to its time-honored leadership position in the realm of technical and creative computing. The basis for the 3000 family is NUMAflexTM technology, SGI's innovative and flexible use of a superior supercomputer architecture.
As an architecture for high-performance multiprocessor computers, SGITM NUMA (nonuniform memory access) exceeds the capabilities of the SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) architecture used in previous generations of supercomputers. SGI NUMA makes it possible for systems to increase shared memory as needed to meet the demands of CPU-to-memory bandwidth whenever additional processors are added to a configuration. Growing out of a joint project with Stanford University that began more than 10 years ago, SGI NUMA gives technical and creative users superior scalability and performance. SGI is the only computer manufacturer capable of offering third-generation NUMA architecture, leveraging the company's long expertise in leading-edge computing.
NUMAflex technology takes advantage of the architecture through modular bricks that add specialized capacities in graphics, central processing, storage, PCI expansion, or I/O capacity. Even the internal interconnect is modular, so that large installations can be built from small ones, one brick at a time.
Winning through Modularity
NUMAflex technology gives technical and creative customers choices and growth paths never before available. As Janet Matsuda, SGI's director of Graphics Product Marketing, says: "Modularity offers both savings and scalability so that customers don't waste their money on what they don't want and can spend it on what they do want."
Debra Goldfarb, group vice president at analyst firm IDC, agrees: "Modular computing empowers end users to build the kind of environment that they need not only today but over time. SGI, with this product, is really ahead of the curve in the market. We are seeing the [rest of the] industry absolutely trying to catch up" with SGI.
In addition, SGI Origin 3000 servers and SGI Onyx 3000 visualization systems reflect a return to SGI's core competencies.
"It is very exciting for us to see that SGI is once again really becoming true to the mission it had years ago, that of leading the industry in technical computing, " says Goldfarb. "This company has really hit it this time and [we] believe this is really the right technology at the right point in time."
The Power of Visualization
Of course visualization, along with data handling and scalable architecture, has always been one of SGI's three main core competencies. The new SGI Onyx 3000 series, which utilizes next-generation InfiniteReality3TM graphics, will be able to aid users in what Matsuda calls "their need to understand." Says Matsuda, "You can get powerful visualization with powerful computing, because your eyes are the widest channel to the brain. And sometimes you need to give people experiences you don't want them to have in real life."
A unique feature of InfiniteReality3 is its ability to perform visual serving, delivering powerful graphics capabilities over a network as needed. The new SGI Onyx 3000 series systems are also optimized for real-time simulation, such as in planetariums, Reality CenterTM facilities, digital media and geospatial imaging.
A final component of SGI's renewed focus on its customers and what Passarelli calls "working to our strengths" is SGI's continuing strong commitment to both MIPS® and IRIX®, which is evidenced by unprecedented customer demand for the new product line. While SGI sees long-term strategic value in the company's involvement with the Open Source community, "We remain fanatically committed to helping our customers solve their problems in the here and now. For customers on the leading edge, if you give them more capabilities, more compute power, and greater visualization, they can do amazing things." |
