SGI announces strategic AMD processor adoption plan

FREMONT, USA: SGI, a global leader in HPC and data center solutions, re-affirmed its commitment to supporting AMD Opteron series platform choices, including the AMD Opteron 6000 series, across all SGI scale-out server platforms.

SGI server solutions will tackle mission critical server and workstation application workloads with increased performance and energy efficiency.

Day-one support for the new AMD Opteron 6000 series platforms is offered across SGI’s entire design-to-order server portfolio, including CloudRack and Rackable scale-out servers and SGI InfiniteStorage servers.

The ICE Cube modular data center also supports AMD Opteron processors for the first time. With up to 12 cores per processor, SGI servers gain dramatic increases in core density—up to 1,824 cores per rack with CloudRack™ C2 servers and up to 2,208 cores per rack with Rackable half-depth servers. ICE Cube modular data centers can now scale to 41,760 cores per container.

“SGI is excited to expand our AMD Opteron investment and support across our data center and HPC product lines,” said Mark J. Barrenechea, SGI CEO. “With AMD Opteron 6000 series platform support, SGI customers will be able to gain new levels of scale, efficiency, and price/performance metrics.”

As part of SGI’s increased commitment to AMD processor support, SGI expects to release AMD Opteron processor-based configurations of its Altix ICE high performance computing (HPC) clusters and Octane III personal supercomputer later this year. Similarly, the SGI HPC cluster software stack will also be available on the AMD Opteron platform for the first time.

“AMD is excited to extend our relationship with SGI,” said Patrick Patla, vice president and general manager, Server and Embedded Divisions, AMD. “Our AMD Opteron 6000 series platforms deliver unmatched efficiency and scalability and, with SGI’s continued performance leadership and dedication to innovation, we look forward to collaborating in new and meaningful ways with SGI.”

AMD processor and platform support can benefit SGI customers who have realized great advantages in memory throughput and price/performance/watt through the use of AMD Opteron processor-based SGI servers in the past.

“We are pleased about SGI’s commitment to embrace AMD’s newest cutting-edge processors and platforms,” said Burzin N. Engineer, vice president, technology at Shopzilla.

“SGI servers with AMD Opteron processors have been and will continue to be the backbone of our IT strategy and infrastructure. The addition of AMD Opteron 6000 series platforms to SGI’s server lines provides Shopzilla, Inc. with an increased core count and compelling density, and an unbeatable overall price performance.”