盡管目前SGI公司的財政狀況非常的不樂觀，但是作為系統供應商，他們再次在該領域獨領風騷，目前他們在SUSE Linux系統的支持下，成功的搭建了一個由1024顆安騰cpu組成的Linux計算機集群，打破了以前由他們保持的512顆cpu的記錄。
這次方案是在SGI Altix 4700 刀片服務器，集群初步構建包含4096顆安騰CPU、17TB的內存和330TB的硬盤驅動器。
全文如下：來自：http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/74751
Despite the dire financial situation at SGI, the system vendor managed to demonstrate once again the scalability of Linux in operation with 1,024 Itanium 2 processors running on the Novell/Suse distribution of the Open Source system. SGI thus broke the old record of 512 CPUs that it had also set.
The test took place on Altix 4700 blade servers that are part of a new supercomputer at the Leibniz Day Center (LRZ) in Garching near Munich. In Phase I, the cluster is scheduled to go into operation with 4,096 Itanium 2 processors, 17 terabytes of RAM, and 330 terabytes of hard drive space in SGI's Infinite Storage. In the initial phase, the operators will be using partitions with 256 CPUs; in the second phase, with 512 CPUs.
SGI's Altix 4700 blades come in two versions: "Bandwidth Compute" offers a CPU socket for Itanium 2 (1.66 GHz), while "High Density" has two sockets, though the clock rate is 400 MHz instead of 667. Each blade has four memory slots, each of which can have up to 8 GB of RAM. 32 blades fit into one rack.
SGI wants to use the new socket-compatible dual-core version of the Itanium 2 (Montecito) in its blades and Altix 450 midrange server.
In addition, SGI has also created a new family of servers for technical and business applications: the Linux server Altix XE has Intel's Woodcrest CPUs. Two of the dual-core, 3 GHz Xeon processors can handle up to 32 GB of RAM in the systems. SGI offers two versions of the Mac server: one of them takes up one rack unit; the other one, two.
According to hpcwire, SGI will be commenting on its reorganization on June 30. (Craig Morris) / (jk/c't)
