New SGI UV 2 – World’s Largest in-memory System for Data-intensive Computing

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SGI is rolling out the second generation of their “Big Brain” UV supercomputer at ISC’12 next week. As the world’s largest shared memory supercomputer, the SGI UV 2 combines up to 4096 Intel Sandy Bridge cores and 64 terabytes of memory in a single-instance.

If you want to do data-intensive computing, you have a number of technology options to make the applications go faster including Flash memory, SSDs, and RAID. Forget that stuff. With a peak I/O rate of four terabytes per second, the SGI UV 2 arms the company with a simple message; there’s nothing faster than in-memory computing.

The technological advancement demonstrated in this next-generation SGI UV platform is not simply focused on increasing our lead in coherent memory size and corresponding core count.  We have been able to deliver all of this additional capability while driving down the cost of the system,” said Dr. Eng Lim Goh, chief technology officer, SGI.  “In fact the entry level configuration of SGI UV 2 is 40% less expensive than SGI UV 1.  This creates a new level of accessibility for large shared memory systems for researchers and the ‘missing middle’, providing an effective lower overall TCO alternative to clusters.”

SGI was able to reduce the cost of the second-generation system by using the less-expensive Intel Xeon E5 processor and the use of more commodity components. And while SGI has had good success with the first generation UV systems, I’m thinking the lower price of the SGI UV2 will surely make it a winner.