The Blue Gene/L machine overtaking the Earth Simulator has political as well as technical implications. When the Earth Simulator was introduced in 2002, it stunned the U.S. scientific and political community, which feared that the United States was losing its technological edge. The government set aside money to entice companies such as IBM, Silicon Graphics Inc. and Cray Inc. to develop supercomputers that could run faster than the Earth Simulator.
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Today SBS Technologies(R), Inc. (Nasdaq:SBSE), a leading provider of embedded computing technology, announced the first set of InfiniBand(TM) IRIX(R) drivers with HIPPI-FP (High Performance Parallel Interface-Framing Protocol) emulation for InfiniBand host channel adapters (HCAs) supporting SGI 3.3V platforms.
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HP is doing a lot of explaining after it revealed this weekend that it will no longer put Itanium processors in its high-performance workstations.
… However, while HP continues to be a leader with its Itanium shipments — up some 500 percent according to the latest Gartner numbers — Jenkins said HP’s market share is eroding to companies like NEC, Hitachi and SGI when it comes to Itanium projects.
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Silicon Graphics and Silicon Optix jointly demonstrated a new Immersive Theater configuration at the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) conference this week in San Jose, CA.
SGI

When NASA weather forecasters tried to plot the path of Hurricane Ivan this week, they turned to a Silicon Graphics Inc. supercomputer.
“The actual prediction of events like hurricanes is one of the hardest problems in supercomputing,” said Jill Matzke, SGI high performance computing marketing manager. “It’s especially difficult due to the time constraints.”
Supercomputers are coveted for their vast simulation capabilities, from predicting weather to simulating space missions. SGI’s supercomputers helped weather forecasters analyze the path, direction, intensity and rainfall amounts of Hurricane Ivan.
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