University at Buffalo's Center for Computational Research Tests Itanium™ Processor for Biological Applications

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A new era in supercomputing has arrived at the University at Buffalo, one of just three sites in the world selected by SGI to beta-test Intel's new Itanium™ processor. The other sites are the Ohio Supercomputing Center and the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.

"This is the next wave of supercomputing," said Russ Miller, Ph.D., UB professor of computer science and engineering and director of UB's Center for Computational Research.

CCR is conducting the tests in close cooperation with SGI, which has integrated Itanium processors into a PC-server-sized system. CCR scientists now are clustering these systems with advanced networking technologies to create a supercomputer built with Itanium processors.

"The Itanium processor, Intel's first-generation 64-bit architecture, represents not only a dramatically more powerful chip," said Miller. "It also is the first time that high-volume 64-bit processors will be used in supercomputers."

"The choice of UB as one of only three beta-sites worldwide reflects the breadth and depth of CCR's research focus, particularly in modern structural biology," said Jan Silverman, vice president, Advanced Systems Marketing, SGI. "It also reflects the center's extensive experience with cluster computing and creates a new application market opportunity for SGI."

A key test for the new Itanium architecture at CCR will be how it performs with SnB, the protein-structure software of choice used by more than 500 drug-design and research labs, developed by scientists at CCR and Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute.

SnB, based on the Shake-and-Bake algorithm developed by Nobel Laureate Herbert Hauptman, has become a critical tool for determining atomic or near-atomic structures for biomedically important molecules. It is expected to gain even wider use now that the human genome has been sequenced and scientists have millions of gene structures to solve.

"SnB is a computationally intensive program that has been tailored to run on a wide variety of platforms," said Miller. "Therefore, we are able to use the program to evaluate the relative power of many different computer platforms."

Miller said that CCR is "stressing" the Itanium processor-based system in order to evaluate the performance of university-developed codes and to evaluate SGI's Fortran and C compilers for the new architecture.

"An Intel Itanium processor-based cluster provides amazing potential in terms of providing supercomputing capabilities at a significantly reduced price," said Miller. "It will provide small laboratories with the option of obtaining cost-effective computing solutions to problems that may be scaled to large systems in a relatively seamless fashion. Building these systems on top of Linux, an open source operating system, allows scientists, engineers and administrators to tune the systems for their specific needs."

According to Miller, the results of CCR's tests with the prerelease Itanium processors bode well for their performance in supercomputers.

"In evaluating the SnB system on our Beta SGI system with the Itanium processor-based cluster, it appears that the prerelease processors already are competitive with high-end processors," said Miller. "We anticipate that for SnB, these processors will outperform many of the high-end processors when in production. This is certainly good news for the genomics community."

Miller added that the testing of the Itanium processors on SGI systems is one more example of the extremely productive relationship UB's Center for Computational Research has had with SGI.

"We have been thrilled with the CCR and SGI relationship, which has been critical to the success of our center," said Miller. "The 128-processor Origin2000 server, multiple Silicon Graphics Onyx2 visual supercomputers, workstations and PCs from SGI all have performed above expectations. In addition, the local and national support we have received from SGI has been outstanding."

For more information about CCR, go to http://www.ccr.buffalo.edu.

SGI (NYSE: SGI) provides a broad range of high-performance computing and advanced graphics solutions that enable customers to understand and conquer their toughest computing problems. A strong advocate for open technology, SGI is committed to contributing technology from its core competencies in visualization and high-performance computing to the open source community to help solve the toughest computing problems. Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. with offices worldwide, the company is located on the Web at . Additional information on SGI's Itanium processor-based system is available at http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/2000/november/itanium.html.

Silicon Graphics, Onyx and Onyx2 are registered trademarks and SGI, the SGI logo and Origin are trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc. Intel is a registered trademark and Itanium is a trademark of Intel Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.