Appro, a Milipitas, Calif.-based provider of enterprise servers, storage 
and workstations, has announced its completion of the first of four super computer Linux clusters for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 
(LLNL).
Named "Rhea," the Infiniband cluster features 576 AMD (NYSE: AMD) Opteron 8000 Series processors and a peak processing power of 22 teraflops (trillion floating operations) per second. The Rhea server was brought online Oct. 23, but has only just completed its testing phase.
The three remaining clusters -- named "Zeus," "Atlas" and "Minos" -- are scheduled for completion by the end of Q1 2007. Each will feature the Appro Quad XtremeServer solution that was used to create Rhea.
When the additional supercomputing clusters are complete, they will offer LLNL scientists 2,592 4-socket/8-core nodes and approximately 100 teraflops-per-second of processing capacity, which will rank the group in the top three supercomputing resources at the facility.
Supporting Scientific Discovery
According to LLNL, the clusters will enable their scientists to handle sophisticated multi-programmatic, native 64-bit applications, some of which typically support nuclear stockpile stewardship, climate modeling, protein folding, material modeling, dislocation dynamics, and atmospheric, ground flow and earthquake simulations.
"We need supercomputing resources that power scientific discovery," said Mark Seager, who leads LLNL's program to develop new platforms. "These supercomputing resources were created to meet the exacting requirements of the National Nuclear Security Administration, [which is] responsible for the safety, security and reliability of the nation's aging nuclear deterrent.
"The U.S. Department of Energy and NNSA are committed to the acquisition of cost effective systems that can be rapidly deployed to benefit a broad range of scientific research in the national interest."
Where Appro Belongs
"Participating in the creation of the next generation of supercomputers at LLNL is right where Appro belongs," said Daniel Kim, CEO of Appro.
He singled out the company's extensive HPC experience, and its alliance with AMD, as reasons for its ability to meet the LLNL's unique requirements.
Kevin Knox, vice president, Worldwide Commercial Business, AMD, agreed. "AMD and partners like Appro have helped bring volume economics to the 4-way server market," Knox said.
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