Special Features:
SUN GRID-READY CLUSTERS SCALE UP
TO TWO TERAFLOPS
Addressing the increasing demand for the combination of high-performance
and
highly productive computing, Sun Microsystems announced the availability of
Sun Fire Superclusters based on the Sun Fire 6800, Sun Fire 12K and Sun Fire
15K server platforms.
Outclassing competitors with a solution that provides an open platform to
thousands of applications and increases access to compute resources via Sun
ONE Grid Engine software, Sun's new Sun Fire Superclusters also feature Sun
HPC ClusterTools 5 software and Sun's industry- leading Sun Fire Link
interconnect technology.
With this combination, Sun is delivering a ready-to-deploy compute
powerplant
which scales up to two Teraflops and is capable of delivering high performance
with high utilization -- two attributes that are usually viewed within the
industry as trade-off choices.
"With our Sun Fire Superclusters and Sun Fire Link optical interconnect,
Sun
is offering a unique solution for highly productive computing for the so-
called capacity computing segment," said Shahin Khan, vice president of Sun's
High Performance and Technical Computing business. "When it comes to creating
a high performance, highly productive computing environment, our competitors
can't match the scope of tools, ISV applications, storage and visualization
capabilities available on Sun platforms."
Solutions for the World's Toughest Computational Tasks
Targeted to serve the high-end computing requirements of government
agencies,
education and scientific institutions, Sun's Sun Fire Supercluster solutions
are designed to provide increased performance and maximum productivity for a
range of critical computational challenges, including life sciences, weather
and ocean forecasting, cryptanalysis, virtual manufacturing and failure
analysis. Additionally, the open nature of the Sun Supercluster architecture
enables users to collaborate and create evolving computing environments able
to adapt as their problem solving needs expand or change. Sun Supercluster
systems deployed at the High Performance Computing Virtual Laboratory (HPCVL),
Aachen University of Technology and Cambridge University, as well as in
government institutions are already contributing significantly to the
advancement of science and technology.
"Sun's strategy to deliver a complete Supercluster solution is key to
generating momentum in the high-performance technical computing space," said
Earl Joseph, vice president, High Performance Systems, IDC Research. "Aiming
directly at the capability computing segment with the Sun Fire Link
interconnect and additional tools that support highly performing and highly
productive computing environments, we expect Sun's Supercluster solutions will
help increase interest in clustered solutions deployment throughout the
industry."
The Plant Behind the Power
Sun's Supercluster platform of servers, software and interconnect
technologies
are built on the industry-leading Solaris Operating Environment and Sun ONE
platform, and include the following elements:
- Sun Fire 6800 server – Features from two to 24 1.2 Ghz UltraSPARC III
processors, up to 192 GB of memory, 32 PCI slots or 16 hot-swappable cPCI
slots, and one to four Dynamic System Domains. The system offers mainframe-
class availability and resource management features, including full hardware
redundancy, online upgrades, hot CPU upgrades and Dynamic
Reconfiguration.
- Sun Fire 12K server – Supports up to 52 UltraSPARC III 1.2 GHz processors,
up to 288 GB of memory, up to nine hot-swappable, interchangeable Uniboard
CPU/memory boards for easy, dynamic resource provisioning, and fifth-
generation Dynamic System Domains.
- Sun Fire 15K server – Sun's flagship high-end UNIX server, the Sun Fire
15K
system features the Solaris Operating Environment and up to 100 UltraSPARC III
1.2 GHz processors, more than half a terabyte of memory in a single domain,
and fifth-generation Dynamic System Domains.
- Sun Fire Link interconnect - Breakthrough technology that boosts high-end
functionality in the data center and supports industry-leading 4.8 gigabytes
per second -- peak throughput, and peak performance of up to two TeraFlops --
two trillion floating-point operations per second - in a cluster of
systems.
- Sun HPC ClusterTools 5 software -A tightly integrated toolset for managing
a workload of resource intensive, message passing applications, Sun HPC
ClusterTools 5 software enables customers to manage their complex, parallel
computing applications on clusters of Sun's high-end systems.
- Sun ONE Grid Engine software - Sun's flagship distributed resource
management product, Sun ONE Grid Engine software enables the pooling of
resources and increases resource utilization up to 90 percent and higher.
- Sun ONE Studio 7 software - Complete language systems and tools designed
to
speed software development to create and maintain programming projects,
simplifying the tasks that are performed most often: editing, compiling,
building, debugging, and tuning.
Pricing and Availability
The Sun Fire Superclusters will be available worldwide from Sun beginning
April 15. The base configuration with two Sun Fire 6800 server nodes, the
Solaris 9 Operating System, the Sun Fire Link interconnect, Sun HPC
ClusterTools 5, Sun ONE Grid Engine and Sun Studio 7 software starts at
$2,119,230. For simpler, safer, swifter deployment, the Sun Fire Supercluster
solution platform will be available through the Sun Customer Ready Systems
(CRS) program.
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- "The Network Is The
Computer" -- has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. to its position as a leading
provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the
Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide
Web at sun.com
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