The Maui High Performance Computing Center (MHPCC), an Air Force research laboratory center managed by the University of Hawaii, has announced that it will install a 5,120-processor high-performance computing cluster using Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) servers. The acquisition is the largest in the history of MHPCC and the first significant purchase from Dell.

MHPCC is a national resource chartered to help solve complex computational problems for the United States Department of Defense and other government users. The new cluster, made up of 1,280 Dell PowerEdge(TM) 1955 blade servers with dual-core processors, will increase computational capability to more than 60 teraflops.

"The computational capacity provided by Dell will advance MHPCC to the forefront of high performance computing and re-establish it among the leaders in the Department of Defense research and development community," said Gene Bal, executive director of MHPCC. "The new system will complement the Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program's array of high performance computing resources."

TACC Enhances Research, Benchmarking Capabilities

In related news, the Dell benchmarking center at Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin recently announced that it has upgraded its Dell supercomputing cluster, Lonestar, using Dell PowerEdge 1955 blade servers. Doubling in size from 650 nodes to 1,300, the cluster will possess a peak performance of more than 55 teraflops when the system achieves full production status this fall.

"As one of the world's most powerful computing systems, the new Dell cluster, Lonestar, will extend researchers' capabilities for solving some the most interesting and challenging problems in science, while also enabling new research and development activities in areas such social sciences and humanities," said TACC director Dr. Jay Boisseau. "It will also be used by TACC researchers collaborating with leading companies to integrate advanced computing techniques into their research and development and improve their efficiency, productivity and competitiveness."

The benchmarking center helps customers understand how their datasets run on applications for scientific research, oil and gas exploration and finance modeling. Renowned computer scientists load the information on an operational cluster in a real-life environment, the performance is measured and customers learn how to optimize their environment.

Dell 9G Servers Deliver Price/Performance Leadership, Reduced Complexity

Dell's ninth-generation PowerEdge servers feature the most comprehensive enhancements ever to the widely installed product line and support the company's strategy to reduce complexity and drive more complete and cost-effective enterprise technologies across a variety of customer environments.

Customers now can order PowerEdge 1950, 2950, 2900 and 1955 blade servers with the Intel(R) Xeon(R) processor 5100 series that help lower power consumption by up to 25 percent(a) and can deliver up to a 152 percent performance increase(b) over the previous generation dual-socket Dell PowerEdge server.

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