In-Depth

January Inside IBM

• 01/01/2000

According to the TOP500 list of supercomputers, IBM led all vendors with 141 systems – all RS/6000 SPs – up 36 percent from one year ago. SGI/Cray fell from the lead position, a spot it has owned for the entire seven-year history of the TOP500 list.

P500 List Leaders:

1998 1999 Growth

IBM 104 141 36%

SGI 183 133 -27%

Sun 127 113 -11%

The latest TOP500 List continues to underscore one important trend: the emerging number of supercomputers used in commercial applications. Nearly half of the systems on the TOP500 – 246 – are used for commercial applications. In the elite top 100, seven of the nine systems used for commercial computing are RS/6000 SPs running AIX, IBM’s UNIX operating system.

A prototype of the ASCI White supercomputer, an RS/6000 SP being built for the Department of Energy, debuted on TOP500 at number 120. When this computer is completed and delivered to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as planned next year, it will be capable of up to 10 teraflop performance. This translates to 10 trillion floating-point operations per second, or more than four times quicker than the fastest computer on the TOP500 list today.

The "TOP500 Supercomputing Sites" is compiled and published by supercomputing experts Jack Dongarra from the University of Tennessee, and Erich Strohmaier and Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim (Germany). The entire list can be viewed at www.top500.org.

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IBM’s series of PC 300PL commercial desktops and IntelliStation E Pro workstations use Intel 820 core chipset and RAMBUS memory. In total, IBM is offering five new PC 300PL models and 11 new IntelliStation E Pro models. The range of specifications, starting prices and available options for the new models are listed below.

New IBM PC 300PL Models:

• Processor from Pentium III 600 MHz to Pentium III 733MHz

• Operating system Windows NT/95/98

• Front-side bus 133 MHz

• Form Factor 7x6 mini-tower or 5x4 desktop configurations

• 128 RAMBUS memory

• Hard disk drives from 10.1GB-20.4 GB

• Graphics SR9 AGP 4X or 2X video subsystem with S3 Savage 4 graphics

• Peripherals IBM ScrollPoint Mouse II

• Security features new embedded security chip, Alert on LAN 2

• Estimated starting price: $2,399

New IntelliStation E Pro Models:

• Processor Pentium III 600 MHz, 667 MHz or 733 MHz

• Operating system Windows NT

• Front-side bus 133 MHz

• Form Factor 5x4 desktop configuration

• 128-512 MB RAMBUS ECC memory

• Hard disk drives from 9.1 GB-20.4 GB

• Graphics IBM Fire GL1, Matrox Millenium G400, or Appian

• Gemini video adapters

• Peripherals IBM ScrollPoint Mouse II

• Security features new embedded security chip, Alert on LAN 2

• Estimated starting price: $2,539

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IBM is offering a free upgrade program to ease transitions to Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional in the United States and Canada. The program includes IBM PC 300 and IntelliStation models preloaded with Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, purchased between Sept. 1, 1999 and March 31, 2000. The upgrade, which requires a shipping and handling fee, will contain a Windows 2000 upgrade CD, as well as the IBM System Solution CD for Windows 2000, providing migration hints and tips, BIOS updates, device drivers, and service and support information. IBM PC HelpCenters will provide for 30 days of installation support for customers participating in this Windows 2000 upgrade program.

For more information, visit www.pc.ibm. com/ww/software/index.html.

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Vanguard Solutions Group Inc. entered a marketing agreement with IBM that gives IBM the right to sell and promote Vanguard’s Graphical Performance Series (GPS) business intelligence/data warehouse products within North America. This marketing agreement extends the scope of Vanguard’s five-year participation in the IBM Business Partner program. Vanguard employees are certified in business intelligence software and have helped design the IBM AS/400 business intelligence certification program.

For more information, visit Vanguard at www.vanguardsolutions.com.

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Hyperion and IBM have released test results that show Hyperion Essbase OLAP Server, coupled with IBM DB2 Universal Database on the IBM Netfinity server, helps drive real-time business analysis for thousands of business analysts and managers accessing and analyzing billions of business transactions.

In tests at the new IBM Netfinity Teraplex Integration Center, Hyperion and IBM simulated a real-world demand management application based on one terabyte of data with an IBM DB2 Universal Database EEE on an IBM Netfinity server. In those tests, Hyperion Essbase OLAP Server, an open, cross-platform enterprise OLAP server, consistently delivered sub-second analytical queries against the application.

The data set used as the source for the Hyperion and IBM demonstration contains eight billion rows of transactional data. The average response time for the Hyperion and IBM test was 0.2 seconds per query. When the IBM Teraplex experts increased the number of concurrent users to 100, the average response time decreased to 0.0027 seconds per query.

Information on Hyperion is available at www.hyperion.com, or find out more about the IBM Teraplex Integration Centers at www.as400.ibm.com/developer/bi/teraplex.