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HP to Provide U.S. Department of Energy Laboratory One of World's Fastest Supercomputers
Agreement Results in World's Most Powerful Linux-based Supercomputer
PALO ALTO, Calif., and RICHLAND, Wash., April 16, 2002
Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HWP) and the U.S. Department of
Energy's (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) today
announced that PNNL has ordered a $24.5 million HP
supercomputer that will allow researchers to apply computational science
to address key scientific challenges. Once fully operational, the
supercomputer should be one of the fastest in the world and the world's
most powerful Linux-based supercomputer.
Consisting of 1,400 of the next generation of Intel® Itanium™ Family Processors (code-named McKinley and Madison), the new HP
supercomputer would have an expected total peak performance of more than
8.3 teraflops -- roughly 8,300 times faster than a current personal
computer. Calculations that currently take a month to complete could be
done in one day on the new system. "I'm pleased that the U.S. Department of Energy will now have
the world's most powerful Linux-based computer for our pivotal work in
biological and environmental research," said Secretary of Energy
Spencer Abraham. "This new computing power will advance scientific
study in a host of areas and keep DOE and our national laboratories on
the cutting edge of technology. But more than that, it will allow us to
better fulfill our mission to the American people to provide the
science needed to solve critical energy and national security
problems." Scheduled to be fully operational in 2003, the supercomputer
is expected to be more than 30 times faster, have 50 times more disk
space and have 10 times more memory than PNNL's current computer, which
was one of the world's most powerful when installed in 1997.
"Today's announcement shows how HP
has worked to help accelerate the shift from proprietary platforms to
open architectures, which provide increased scalability, speed and
functionality at a lower cost," said Rich DeMillo, vice president and
chief technology officer, HP. "This supercomputer is another validation of HP's
service-centric technology vision, exemplifies the power and benefits
inherent in the Itanium architecture and Linux, and clearly illustrates
that there is more than one top player in the supercomputing market."
The HP supercomputer is
slated to be installed at the Molecular Sciences Computing Facility
within the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory
(EMSL), a DOE scientific user facility at PNNL. DOE's Office of Science
sponsors EMSL through the Biological and Environmental Research
program. Scientists will be granted access to the supercomputer based
on a competitive proposal process and will use it to study complex
chemical problems that form the basis for new discoveries in areas such
as life sciences, subsurface transport, material design, atmospheric
chemistry and combustion. In addition, they will apply the
supercomputer to study geochemistry and biochemistry; radioactive and
chemical waste detection, storage and management; systems biology;
genomics; proteomics; materials science; fundamental studies in
chemistry and computer science; and catalysis. "As we try to use computational results to replace difficult
and expensive experiments, increased computational power is essential,"
said Dave Dixon, associate director of theory, modeling and simulation,
EMSL. "The advanced architecture of the HP
supercomputer provides that power, which will permit us to attain close
to peak performance on our key computational chemistry problems."
Delivery of the supercomputer is scheduled to begin with the arrival of HP McKinley-based nodes in mid-2002 and conclude in 2003 with a final shipment of HP Madison-based systems.
The supercomputer is based upon an interconnect that provides a
significantly reduced communication lag time between processors and
offers highly sustained performance -- two factors crucial to
computational chemistry research being done by PNNL. The supercomputer
will have 1.8 terabytes of memory and 170 terabytes of disk space. (One
terabyte is equal to 1,024 gigabytes.)
More information is available in an online press kit at http://www.wswinteractive.com/hp/pnnl/default.htm.
About Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is a DOE research facility
and delivers breakthrough science and technology in the areas of
environment, energy, health, fundamental sciences and national
security. Battelle, based in Columbus, Ohio, has operated the
laboratory for DOE since 1965. Business inquiries on PNNL research and
technologies should be directed to +1 888 375 PNNL or email
inquiry@pnl.gov.
More information on EMSL is available at http://www.emsl.pnl.gov. The Molecular Sciences Computing Facility is at http://www.emsl.pnl.gov:2080/capabs/mscf/index.html.
About HP
Hewlett-Packard Company -- a leading global provider of
computing and imaging solutions and services -- is focused on making
technology and its benefits accessible to all. HP had total revenue of $45.2 billion in its 2001 fiscal year. Information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com.
Intel and Itanium are U.S. registered trademarks of Intel Corp.
This news release contains forward-looking statements that
involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they
never materialize or prove incorrect, could cause the results of HP
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other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be
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any statements concerning proposed new products, services, or
developments; any statements regarding future economic conditions or
performance; statements of belief and any statement of assumptions
underlying any of the foregoing. The risks, uncertainties and
assumptions referred to above include employee management issues; the
timely development, production and acceptance of products and services
and their feature sets; the challenge of managing asset levels,
including inventory; the flow of products into third-party distribution
channels; the difficulty of keeping expense growth at modest levels
while increasing revenues; and other risks that are described from time
to time in HP's Securities and Exchange Commission reports, including but not limited to HP's
annual report on Form 10-K, as amended on January 30, 2002, for the
fiscal year ended October 31, 2001, and subsequently filed reports. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.
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