SGI Altix UV delivers up to 35 percent performance gain based on Intel Xeon processor E7 family

FREMONT, USA: SGI announced a performance gain of up to 35% in the speed of the SGI Altix UV server line based on the Intel Xeon processor E7 product family, resulting in four new world record benchmarks. Full support for the Intel Xeon processor E7 product family (formerly codenamed "Westmere-EX") on SGI Altix UV servers is also now available.

Altix UV, the world’s fastest and most scalable shared memory compute platform, has been selected by many companies for its superior performance, standards-based operation and ease of use. With the new Intel Xeon processor E7 product family, Altix UV delivers enhanced capability for managing complex workloads such as large database management, fraud detection, signal processing, real-time analytics, and complex scientific and engineering simulations.

“The Altix UV system has become the standard for providing developers and users with the ability to make faster and more informed mission-critical business decisions based on more complete data,” said SGI CTO Dr. Eng Lim Goh. “By incorporating more robust Intel® Xeon® E7 processors, Altix UV provides a platform that is unmatched in terms of performance with an open standards approach.”

Important new features in the Intel Xeon E7 processor product family can be fully leveraged in Altix UV to an extent that no other compute platform can achieve:

* Full-scale 256 socket support for the highest performing 130W processors, including Xeon processor E7-4870 with 10 cores running at 2.4GHz and Xeon processor E7-8837 with 8 cores at 2.66GHz;
* Intel Advanced Encryption Standard for ultra secure processing;
* Additional reliability and power control features.

The Altix UV family is unparalleled in its scalability with single-system support for up to 2,048 Intel Xeon cores (4,096 threads) and 16 terabytes of shared memory. Altix UV runs completely unmodified Novell SUSE or Red Hat Linux operating systems.

Support for standard Windows Server 2008 R2 is also now available. Additionally, SGI has submitted world record performance results that demonstrate the speed of the Altix UV with the Intel Xeon processor E7 family. These record benchmarks show up to a 35 percent performance gain in comparison to previous generation processors in Altix UV.

“End customers are demanding significant improvements in performance and responsiveness across a diverse set of data-intensive workloads,” said Boyd Davis, vice president and general manager of Intel Data Center Group Marketing. “From HPC, to business intelligence, to data warehousing and beyond, SGI and Intel are providing these with Altix UV based on Intel’s innovative new Xeon processor E7 family.”

The Altix product family (models UV 10, UV 100 and UV 1000) with full support of Intel Xeon processor E7 is available immediately.