The Center for Computational Research (CCR) at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York (UB) has installed an 834-node Dell high-performance computing cluster.

The new cluster is made up of Dell PowerEdgeTM SC1425, 1850 and the award-winning Dell PowerEdge 2850 servers. It has a theoretical peak performance of more than 10 TFlops, with an anticipated sustained performance of more than 7 Tflops. The installation brings the number of processors in UB's CCR to nearly 7,000 and extends the center's theoretical peak performance from approximately 12 trillion floating point operations per second (TFlops) to approximately 22 TFlops, ranking it among the 50 fastest supercomputing clusters in the world.

CCR, part of UB's New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences, will use the new cluster to support research in life sciences, physical sciences, engineering and visualization. Even during installation, this machine was used extensively to render a number of animated videos that are currently being shown on MTV2. Russ Miller, Ph.D., director of CCR and UB Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, said today's digital-driven society, in which research and discovery is often driven by simulation and modeling, requires high-end computing, including storage, networking, computing and visualization.

"To achieve this, it is critical to build a balanced high-end infrastructure that incorporates the efficient collection, organization, processing, visualization and distribution of data," he said.

The Dell PowerEdge 1850 and 2850 servers are the foundation of Dell's vision for the scalable enterprise, providing customers with powerful standards-based building blocks for consolidation, databases, enterprise applications and high-performance computing. The Dell PowerEdge SC1425 is a powerful 1U server specifically designed to meet the requirements of supercomputing clusters and distributed Web farms, where performance and cost are customers' top priority.

"When analyzing our budget, the type of computing that would satisfy our users' needs in a cost-effective fashion and the quality of support and maintenance that we could expect, we chose a standards-based system from Dell that incorporates IBRIX and an EMC storage system, as well as interconnects from Force10 and Myricom," Miller said.

John Mullen, vice president of Dell's higher education business, said clusters have become the platform for a growing number of the fastest supercomputers in the world.

"More than 300 of the world's fastest supercomputers are using Intel® processors, and most of those are labeled 'clusters,'1" Mullen said. "Dell's supercomputing strategy has always centered on a standards-based, scalable enterprise architecture, which offers customers flexibility and the most computing power for their money."

About Dell

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) is a trusted and diversified information-technology supplier and partner, and sells a comprehensive portfolio of products and services directly to customers worldwide. Dell, recognized by Fortune magazine as America's most admired company and No. 3 globally, designs, builds and delivers innovative, tailored systems that provide customers with exceptional value. Company revenue for the past four quarters was $51.1 billion. For more information about Dell and its products and services, visit www.dell.com.

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