Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 15:53:41 -0500
From: Erika Grahl <egrahl@schwartz-pr.com>
To: <lwn@lwn.net>
Subject: IBM and NCSA Create Worlds Fastest Linux Supercomputers in Academia

For additional information:

Alise McNeill				Melissa London
Senior Public Relations Specialist	Director of Corporate Public Relations
IBM					Red Hat, Inc.
919-254-6262 or 8/444-6262 		919-547-0012
919-543-4610 FAX 			melissa@redhat.com
alisem@us.ibm.com


IBM and NCSA Create Worlds Fastest Linux Supercomputers in Academia

IBM Linux Servers Deliver Two Teraflops of Processing Speed

Armonk, NY, January 16, 2001--IBM and The National Center for Supercomputing
Applications (NCSA) at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign today
announced that NCSA will install two IBM Linux clusters, creating the
world's fastest Linux supercomputer in academia. NCSAs clusters will have
two teraflops of computing power and will be used by researchers to study
some of the most fundamental questions of science, such as the nature of
gravitational waves first predicted by Albert Einstein in his Theory of
Relativity.

"We believe that Linux clusters will soon be the most widely used
architecture for parallel computing, and that these two clusters from IBM
are the best way to deliver terascale performance," said Dan Reed, Director
of NCSA and the National Computational Science Alliance. "The explosion of
the open source community, the maturity of clustering software, and the
enthusiasm of the scientific community all tell us that Linux clusters are
the future of high-performance computing."

Reed added that Linux clusters provide users with a single, easy-to-use
computing environment that applies to single-user desktop workstations,
small research clusters, and the largest terascale systems.

The two NCSA Linux clusters will include more than 600 IBM eServer xSeries
running Linux and Myricoms Myrinet (www.myricom.com) cluster interconnect
network. The first cluster, to be installed in February by IBM Global
Services, will be based on IBM eServer x330 thin servers, each with two 1
GHz Intel Pentium III processors, running Red Hat Linux. The second
cluster, to be installed this summer, will be one of the first to use
Intels next generation 64-bit Itanium? processor and will run
TurboLinux. The two clusters will expand the proven capability that NCSA
has already demonstrated with Linux clusters and both Intel architectures.

"These IBM Linux clusters will enable scientists to focus more on the
results of their research initiatives, freeing them from the additional
burden of building their own clusters and writing code to support their
heavy computational demands," said Dave Turek, vice-president of Deep
Computing at IBM. "We are seeing an increase in demand for this type of
empowering technology within the scientific community."

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications is the leading-edge
site for the National Computational Science Alliance. NCSA is a leader in
the development and deployment of cutting-edge high-performance computing,
networking, and information technologies. The National Science Foundation,
the state of Illinois, the University of Illinois, industrial partners, and
other federal agencies fund NCSA. For more information visit http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu.

The National Computational Science Alliance is a partnership to prototype
an advanced computational infrastructure for the 21st century and includes
more than 50 academic, government and industry research partners from
across the United States. The Alliance is one of two partnerships funded by
the National Science Foundations Partnerships for Advanced Computational
Infrastructure (PACI) program, and receives cost sharing at partner
institutions. NSF also supports the National Partnership for Advanced
Computational Infrastructure (NPACI), led by the San Diego Supercomputer
Center. For more information see http://alliance.ncsa.uiuc.edu.

The new IBM eServer xSeries, zSeries, pSeries and iSeries models are the
first servers in IBMs new eServer line. The eServer products are designed
for the next generation of e-business to adapt to the needs of the customer
by offering flexibility, technology and guaranteed performance. The IBM
eServer family is the worlds first Linux-enabled server family. IBM
eServer xSeries servers are based on the IBM X-Architecture, a blueprint
for incorporating the latest mainframe technologies into Intel
processor-based servers.

For more information, visit http://www.ibm.com/eserver.

###

The IBM eServer brand consists of the established IBM e-business logo with the
following descriptive term "server" following it. The IBM e-business logo, xSeries
iSeries, pSeries and zSeries are trademarks or registered trademarks of the IBM
Corporation. Linux is registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

All others are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.