FREMONT, Calif. & FUSIONOPOLIS, Singapore--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SGI (NASDAQ: SGI), a trusted leader in technical computing, today announced that the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) has purchased SGI Altix UV 1000, the world’s fastest, most scalable supercomputer, to accelerate public sector research and development in biomedical sciences, physical sciences and engineering. A*STAR is Singapore’s lead government agency dedicated to fostering world-class scientific research and talent.

The A*STAR supercomputing system, housed at the A*STAR Computational Resource Centre (A*CRC) in Fusionopolis, is the first Altix UV 1000 deployment in Singapore. It has 2,112 cores and 12.3TB of shared memory, as well as 32TB of Panasas PAS 8 high performance storage, for the utmost in high powered technical computing.

A*CRC’s largest group of users come from the Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC). They employ advanced methodologies, techniques and new tools in modeling, simulation and visualization, with focus on complex-coupled systems, mechanics and fluid dynamics, large-scale systems, digital modeling, adaptive and collaborative computing, data mining and analyses, computational electronics, electromagnetics, computational materials science and chemistry to power discovery.

“A*STAR researchers will be able to use Altix UV 1000 to advance knowledge and accelerate solutions to critical problems in natural sciences, technology and engineering, such as complex structural mechanics and fluid dynamics applied to industrial processes, discovering new catalysts and chemical compounds, and designs of electromagnetic, opto-electronic and photonic systems,” said Marek Michalewicz, director, A*STAR Computational Resource Centre. “Computational biologists at A*STAR in genomics, cancer research, drug discovery, protein dynamics, cell and organ simulation will also benefit immensely.”

SGI Altix UV 1000 will be used for a broad range of technical computing applications, and will support the research needs of more than 600 people in the A*STAR user community. The system meets the needs of very large memory jobs, as well as parallel jobs that do not scale well on “off-the-shelf” clustered systems due to excessively high communication latencies.

“Based on its large memory capability, Altix UV 1000 will allow super large datasets to be explored and modeled, greatly accelerating scientific discovery in Singapore,” said Philip Chua, vice president Asia Pacific at SGI. “A*STAR will be able to provide the best supercomputing platform to its researchers, further solidifying A*STAR’s position as a premier research organization.”

SGI Professional Services, with industry-standard x86 processors, help optimize and enable existing applications to port easily. Altix UV compliments A*STAR’s existing HPC environment, offering users significant architectural choices and advantages to help accelerate results.

“Scientists and engineers with the most complex research and data needs the world over are getting real results with Altix UV powered by the Intel® Xeon® processor 7500 series,” said Rajeeb Hazra, general manager of high performance computing at Intel. “We are excited for A*STAR to reap the vast benefits of Intel and SGI’s close collaboration to accelerate Singapore’s scientific and engineering discoveries.”

About SGI

SGI, a trusted leader in technical computing, is focused on helping customers solve their most demanding business and technology challenges. Visit www.sgi.com for more information.

About A*STAR

The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) is Singapore’s lead government agency dedicated to fostering world-class scientific research and talent for a vibrant knowledge-based economy.

A*STAR actively nurtures public sector research and development in biomedical sciences, and physical sciences and engineering, and spurs growth in Singapore's key economic clusters by providing human, intellectual and industrial capital to their partners in industry and the healthcare sector.

A*STAR currently oversees 14 research institutes and seven consortia and centres located in Biopolis and Fusionopolis and their vicinity, and supports extramural research with the universities, hospital research centres, and other local and international partners. For more information, please visit www.a-star.edu.sg.

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