SGI doesn’t coordinate with me, of course, but I can’t help but consider the timing of their most recent press release in the context of the RNA Networks announcement last week.
This release is titled “SGI Altix Touts Large Global Shared Memory” and restablishes that SGI does in fact offer shared memory gear
Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) is in a category all by itself when it comes to massive globally shared main memory and globally addressable memory on SGI Altix 4700 systems. With numerous installations in the 4 TB range, and a number more in the 8 TB range, the groundbreaking scalability of SGI systems extends to 21 TB of globally addressable main memory at customer sites. This is over five times the size of memory that other vendors can offer today. The system is designed to accommodate 128 terabytes of globally shared memory under the control of a single instance of the Linux operating system! The system may also be partitioned among multiple instances of Linux and provide globally addressable shared memory among OS instances via SGI’s unique NUMAlink interconnect technology.
Since we HPC’ers are obviously very aware of what SGI offers, I can only think that this is aimed at those folks who read the RNANetworks announcement and thought “hey, that’s just what we need.”