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SGI and Beijing Normal University Team Up to Expedite China Life Science Research

Posted on: Monday, 13 October 2003, 06:00 CDT

BEIJING and MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SGI , a global leader in high performance computing, storage and advanced visualization and Beijing Normal University (BNU), one of the most prestigious schools in educational research and training, today introduced the BNU and SGI Bioinformatics Center. This center is an integral part of the National Base of Life Science and Technology Education initiated by the China Education Ministry, to broaden the number of students and researchers in this field for the future. The center is powered by SGI(R) Altix(TM) 3000 supercluster running the Linux(R) operating system and utilizes products from the SGI(R) InfiniteStorage family of storage solutions that allow customers to improve their data management capabilities and capacity. This project marks the first SGI Altix system installed in China.

National Bases of Life Science and Technology Education were launched by the China Education Ministry in 36 major universities and colleges in China in September 2002, to train perspective researchers in the life science field. This program is designed to increase China's number of high-caliber researchers and improve and strengthen the overall infrastructure in life sciences research with state-of-the-industry computing facilities.

"The National Bases of Life Science and Technology Education will increase the speed and quality of training and education for more researchers in life sciences and keep China's research capabilities closer to that of western countries in the 21st century," said Mr. Zhong Binglin, president, BNU. "High performance computing plays an instrumental role in the process of life sciences research and SGI is an acknowledged leader in that field with supercomputers that meet the immense challenges of technical computing. We believe SGI Altix 3000 will expedite BNU's progress in life sciences research."

Leveraging SGI high performance computing expertise and decades of BNU educational experience, the Bioinformatics Center will plan and implement training programs in bioinformatics to broaden the pool of well-trained and talented research professionals that will improve China's life sciences research program.

SGI provides technology to compute, store and visualize research data including a SGI Altix 3000 supercluster with 16 Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 processors, a 1TB-capacity SGI(R) InfiniteStorage TP9100 disk array and two Silicon Graphics(R) Octane2(TM) visual workstations with dual processors and SGI(R) VPro(TM) graphics.

"We are pleased that Beijing Normal University, one of the top universities concentrated on training and education of life science research in China, has chosen SGI technology for their HPC needs," said Steven Lai, president, SGI China. "For more than two decades, SGI core competencies of HPC, storage, and visualization have been keenly aligned with the development of life sciences in the world and has enjoyed success in accelerating research progress, fueling innovation and discovery in many disciplines. The unique combination of SGI technology solutions and the decades of training and education experience of BNU, will ultimately lead to faster and more successful for life science research in China."

SGI Altix 3000 supercluster is the first of its kind applied in life science in China. Altix systems combine SGI(R) NUMAflex(TM) architecture with Itanium 2 processors and the Linux OS. It surpasses traditional microprocessor-based servers and vector-based supercomputers in openness, efficiency and performance cost ratio. In recent benchmark tests, Altix 3000 series excelled in several areas:

-- World-Record Floating-Point Performance

In recent SPECfp(R)_rate_base2000 tests, a 1GHz SGI Altix 3000 system

generated world-record floating-point performance for a 64-processor

server with a score of 862.

-- World's Fastest Memory Bandwidth Performance

SGI Altix 3000 superclusters surpassed leading microprocessor-based

servers on the STREAM Triad benchmark, which measures memory bandwidth

performance. The 64-processor system achieved memory bandwidth of

125 GB per second on a single system image

-- No. 1 in Linux I/O Performance

The SGI Altix 3000 family has demonstrated sustained I/O throughput

of more than 2GB per second running a single copy of Linux, an

industry-leading result for Linux systems.

-- Unsurpassed Scalability on Technical Applications

In recent tests the SGI Altix system performed over two times

faster than competitors on a broad range of application benchmarks.

Applications tested across all major technical compute markets include

those in computational chemistry, biosciences, environmental modeling,

and computational fluid dynamics. (See separate release dated

June 24, 2003,

http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/2003/june/altix_benchmarks.html)

SGI is focused on five key industries including life sciences, government and defense, manufacturing, energy, and media providing advanced technologies and solutions for HPC, storage and visualization. SGI's core competencies and life sciences domain expertise effectively facilitate research institutions in exploiting the world of science and meeting the most complex science challenges. Since opening its office in China over a decade ago, SGI has received accolades for its unique expertise in HPC from research bodies, universities and science academies that are confronted with complex data challenges.

SGI: The Source of Innovation and Discovery(TM)

SGI, also known as Silicon Graphics Inc., is the world's leader in high- performance computing, visualization and storage. SGI's vision is to provide technology that enables the most significant scientific and creative breakthroughs of the 21st century. Whether it's sharing images to aid in brain surgery, finding oil more efficiently, studying global climate or enabling the transition from analog to digital broadcasting, SGI is dedicated to addressing the next class of challenges for scientific, engineering and creative users. SGI was named on FORTUNE magazine's 2003 list of "Top 100 Companies to Work For." With offices worldwide, the company is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., and can be found on the Web at http://www.sgi.com/.

Beijing Normal University

Beijing Normal University has more than a hundred years of history. It is one of the key universities for being constructed under the 211 Project of China. Life Science Institute of Beijing Normal University is one of the important bases for cultivating talents and technical personnel of life science in our country. A vast number of excellent teachers are working in the institute. Among them, one is the academician of China Academy of Science, 25 are professors, 38 are associated professors, and 20 are post doctorates. With decades in pioneering work and rigid teaching made by many scholars famous both at home and abroad, including Sun Ruyong, the academician of China Academy of Science, basic research at macro and micro level are represented by the State Key scientific topics. These topics include Cell Biology and Ecology as well as key scientific topics such as Biological Chemistry and Molecular Modeling developments by leaps and bounds in Beijing Normal University. The scientific research level is constantly improved. At present, several research organizations have been set up in the University. Among them are the key laboratory of the Ministry of Education of Cell Proliferation & Control, Proteomics Research Institute of Higher Education, Beijing Key Laboratory of Gene Engineering Medicines & Biological Technology, Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education of Biodiversity & Ecological Engineering and the SGI Biological Information Talents Training Center. Many key projects being conducted by the Institute include the State key research project (973 Project), the key project of the State Natural Science Fund, involving research topics of Bioinformatics and its application. Life Science Institute of Beijing Normal University is also one of the earliest institutes of higher education, which conducts scientific research of Bioinformatics as well as relevant talents training in China. Researchers of the Institute have made a thorough study on fields such as Proteomics, proteins interactions database, Bioinformatics for detecting disease, etc. In the most recent three years, researchers of the Institute have published many theses in the world famous magazines such as Nucleic Acids Research, Proteomics, Journal of Molecular Evolution as well as Gene, etc.

NOTE: Silicon Graphics, SGI, Octane and the SGI logo are registered trademarks and Altix, Octane2, VPro, The Source of Innovation and Discovery and NUMAflex are trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries worldwide. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. Intel and Itanium are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

CONTACT: Marla Robinson of SGI, +1-256-864-3426, or marlar@sgi.com; or SGI PR Hotline, +1-650-933-7777, or SGI Investor Relations, +1-650-933-6102; or David Yao of Newsway Communications, Beijing, +86 010 6525 6706, or david.yao@newswaycom.com.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20010510/SFTH025LOGO )