Appro delivers LLNL up to 16,128 Cores of SuperComputing Power

Milpitas, CA -- 06/27/2006 - Appro (http://www.appro.com), a leading provider of high-performance enterprise computing servers, storage and high-end workstations today announced the award of the Peloton supercomputing project from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The deployment will consist of three Appro 1U Quad XtremeServer Clusters with a total of 16,128 cores based on the latest Dual-Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processors. The High-Performance Computing (HPC) Solution includes a two stage 20 Gb/s 4x Double Data Rate (DDR) InfiniBand fabric featuring Voltaire edge, spine switches and Mellanox dual port DDR InfiniBand HCAs. In order to affordably and efficiently provide this production quality computing capacity, the cluster of servers will be deployed in Scalable Unit (SU) groups.

The Clusters will be used in the unclassified environment as a multi-programmatic and institutional (M&IC) resource and in the classified environment to solve complex computational problems related to the National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) Stockpile Stewardship Program. This program ensures the safety, security and reliability of the nation's nuclear deterrent. Identical scalable units with 1,152 cores will be grouped together to form the three shared memory multiprocessor (SMP) clusters. Multiple organizations and programs within the Laboratory will share these supercomputing clusters for large, medium and small scale scientific simulations.

"Peloton scalable unit deployments is the next stage in Linux cluster innovation that will enable Livermore's M&IC next generation scientific simulation capability in support of our national security missions, " said Mark Seager ICCD ADH for Advanced Technology. "With the addition of Peloton, the Laboratory will significantly increase the broad-based computing resources available to meet the ever increasing demand for the large scale simulations indispensable to advancing all scientific disciplines."

"We are very pleased to provide Livermore with Appro XtremeServers High-Performance Computing based Clusters to meet the staggering demand for 50-100 teraFLOP/s scale scientific simulations," said Daniel Kim, CEO of Appro. "Appro offers a totally managed HPC solution that can incorporate any of our full range of high-performance server platforms and technologies by building a cost-effective, high-bandwidth clusters today on an infrastructure that is flexible and easy to scale."

"The Dual-Core AMD Opteron processors in Appro's XtremeServers, combined with Appro's implementation of InfiniBand interconnect technology, will significantly enhance the critical engineering research conducted at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory," said Kevin Knox, vice president, commercial business, AMD. "Corporate and research institutions that demand an industry-standard architecture to meet the needs of wide ranging scientific applications, maximize researchers' productivity, and optimize costs can rely on solutions based on AMD's revolutionary Direct Connect Architecture."

"We're extremely pleased to work with Appro and AMD to deliver to LLNL the world's largest Double Data Rate InfiniBand scalable unit deployment which will enable them to run complex physical simulations at record-breaking speeds," said Peter Waxman, vice president of sales, North America at Voltaire. "Voltaire's new Double Data Rate InfiniBand solutions deliver 20 Gb/s performance to enable the construction of the world's largest, highest performing clustered supercomputers."

About Appro Appro's headquarters is in Milpitas, CA with an R&D and manufacturing center in Asia and a sales and service office in Houston, TX. Appro accelerates technical, IT and business results through its innovative product architecture, industry leading engineering, people, and experience. Appro enables a variety of network computing applications by developing powerful, scalable, and reliable clusters, servers, storage subsystems and high-end workstations for the high-performance computing (HPC), Internet computing and cluster market.