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SGI Delivers New SGI Altix 3000 System to AstraZeneca R&D Wilmington

Posted on: Friday, 3 October 2003, 06:00 CDT

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SGI today announced that AstraZeneca, one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies, has purchased SGI(R) Altix(TM) 3000 and SGI(R) Origin(R) 3000 servers and superclusters. Installed in the R&D facility at AstraZeneca's U.S. corporate headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, the systems will support simulation studies and the large computational requirements of identifying promising drug candidates.

"The new 8-cpu Altix system, based on the Linux operating system and the Intel Itanium 2 processor, will support complex chemistry applications that are now becoming available on Linux platforms, and will do so with a shared memory model," explains AstraZeneca's Jim Damewood, associate director, Chemistry, Computational Chemistry & Informatics, whose department has used SGI technologies for the last 15 years. "This technology delivers the benefits of the modular Linux approach coupled with the ability to dedicate all processors to the same complex task simultaneously."

The shared memory architecture of SGI Origin and Altix servers and superclusters enables all processors within a system to tackle the same problem together, while the alternative distributed computing model requires tasks to be broken up into smaller jobs to be addressed by just a subset of processors. "The Origin server upgrade, installed in June, has expanded our high-performance computing capacity to 64 processors," adds Damewood. "Data sets can be 50 to 100 gigabytes. That's an easy task for our SGI Origin and Altix systems due to their scalable, shared-memory architecture, but it can become an issue when dealing with distributed computing systems."

"SGI specializes in developing and delivering targeted solutions for scientific research," says SGI's Bill Bartling, Senior Director, Market Strategy. "It's satisfying to see that AstraZeneca, one of our longest and most trusted customers, finds that its increasingly complex computing requirements are met by SGI solutions. We look forward to working with AstraZeneca for many years to come."

The new SGI Origin and Altix systems, installed at the end of June, will be dedicated to lead identification and optimization efforts, critical early phases in the discovery of novel chemical entities that are suitable for use as drugs in living systems.

AstraZeneca R&D Wilmington's Computational Chemistry & Informatics lab utilizes a combination of SGI high-performance computing and visualization technologies, including graphics workstations for visualization and a large-screen SGI(R) Reality Center(R) meeting room for graphical display in group settings, in addition to its SGI Origin and Altix server infrastructure. The company's R& D facilities in Sodertalje and Molndal, Sweden, have similar SGI Reality Center facilities.

SGI, which has been a leader in the life sciences community for more than 15 years, delivers computational solutions for life and chemical sciences discovery research organizations in pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology, academic and national labs. For further information, visit http://www.sgi.com/go/chembio, and for details about SGI's Origin and Altix servers and superclusters, visit http://www.sgi.com/servers/.

About SGI

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/.

About AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca is a major international healthcare business engaged in the research, development, manufacturing and marketing of prescription pharmaceuticals and the supply of healthcare services. It is one of the top five pharmaceutical companies in the world with healthcare sales of over $17.8 billion and leading positions in sales of gastrointestinal, oncology, cardiovascular, neuroscience and respiratory products. In the United States, AstraZeneca is a $9.3 billion healthcare business with more than 12,000 employees. AstraZeneca is listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (Global and European) as well as the FTSE4Good Index. AstraZeneca has three major research sites in North America: Wilmington, Del.; Boston, Mass.; and Montreal, Canada. Worldwide, AstraZeneca operates nine major research and development sites. For more information, please visit http://www.astrazeneca-us.com/.

NOTE: Silicon Graphics, SGI, Origin, Reality Center and the SGI logo are registered trademarks and Altix is a trademark 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. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

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