SeaMicro’s SM10000 system consists of:

• 512 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processors
• 1 terabyte of DRAM
• 0 – 64 SATA solid state or hard disk drives
• 8 – 64 Gigabit Ethernet uplinks; or 2 – 16 10 Gigabit Ethernet uplinks
• The entire system is 10 rack units tall (17.5 inches tall).

The multi-year, multi-phase agreement includes the delivery of a Cray XT6 supercomputer and a delivery of a next-generation Cray supercomputer code-named “Baker.” Phase one of the contract, the delivery of the Cray XT6 system, is expected to go into production in the second half of 2010. Phase two of the contract, which includes the delivery of the additional “Baker” system and upgrading the Cray XT6 system to a “Baker” supercomputer, is expected to be complete in 2011. Additional upgrades are planned for 2012. The “Baker” supercomputer will feature a new interconnect chipset known as “Gemini” and enhanced system software that improves the performance, productivity and reliability of the system. The “Baker” supercomputer builds on the Cray XT system architecture found in the world’s fastest supercomputer.

Market Research Media has released an update of its report “U.S. Federal IT Market Forecast 2011-2015“. With a cumulative market valued at $530 billion (2011 – 2015), the U.S. Federal IT market will grow steadily – at about 4.7% CAGR over the next five years. The Administration is keen to deploy technologies proved their worth in the private sector. The technology segments like business intelligence, cloud computing, eDiscovery, GIS and geospatial, Health Information Technology, non-relational database management systems, Smart Grid, SOA, unified communications and virtualization will see double digit growth in the period 2011 – 2015. Total annual U.S. Federal IT market will surpass $116 billion by 2015.

The new AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform features include:

• The industry’s only 8- and 12-core server processors performing at up to two times the level of AMD’s previous generation 6-core processors, including an 88 percent increase in integer performance4 and a 119 percent increase in floating point performance.
• Enhanced integrated memory controller supporting four channels of DDR3 memory for up to a 2.5x improvement in overall memory bandwidth.
• Thirty-three percent more memory channels per processor than competitive 2P solutions.
• 50% higher DIMM capacity compared to previous generations, with up to 12 per processor, increasing the available memory overall and improving virtualization, database and HPC applications.
• AMD 5600 Series chipset with I/O virtualization capability, HyperTransport™ 3.0 technology and PCI Express® 2.0.
• Removal of the “4P tax”, since the same processors can be used in both 2P and 4P designs, and 4P-capable processors are now the same price as 2P-capable processors, bringing greatly improved value to the 4P space.
• Unprecedented price/performance. In a comparison between a best-performing 2P competitive platform versus a similar best-performing 4P AMD-based platform, customers can recognize up to double the performance and more than 10% lower total processor price.
• Significant new power management features including a C1E power state to conserve energy when idle, the Advanced Platform Management Link allowing APML-enabled platforms to be remotely monitored for power and cooling, and AMD CoolSpeed technology, which automatically reduces p-states if a specified temperature limit is exceeded.
• A wide range of power and performance options with no compromise on the available feature sets.
• A legacy of consistency and stability. The new AMD Opteron platform is chipset- and socket- compatible between 2P and 4P and will be compatible with the planned processors based on the next-generation AMD server processor core, code-named “Bulldozer”.

The three Cray supercomputers included in the 2010 DoD HPCMP procurement are expected to be delivered in the second half of this year, and will be the company’s next generation supercomputing systems code-named “Baker.” Featuring a new interconnect chipset known as “Gemini” and enhanced system software improving the performance, productivity and reliability of the system, Cray’s planned “Baker” supercomputers build on the Cray XT system architecture of the world’s fastest supercomputer and improve it in every dimension.

Under the terms of the contract, Cray will provide three of its next generation supercomputing systems to top DoD Supercomputing Resource Centers located throughout the United States. These centers include the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) located at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio; the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center (ARSC) in Fairbanks, Alaska; and the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) in Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Cray supercomputers will be used to support basic and applied research, and product development and evaluation. These systems will help to protect the military through the development of new materials, fuels, armor and weapons systems, and assist long-term weather predictions to plan humanitarian and military operations throughout the world.

A recent study of Market Research Media “U.S. Federal Cloud Computing Market Forecast 2010-2015” forecasts that U.S. Government spending on cloud computing enters an explosive growth phase – at about 40% CAGR over the next six years, with federal cloud computing expenditure to pass $7 billion by 2015.

Cloud computing is a pay-per-use model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable and reliable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal user effort or service provider interaction.

DOE deploys the cloud concept with its federal partners to identify opportunities to provide better service at lower cost through cloud services. The cloud model comprises five key characteristics, three delivery models, and four deployment models.

The key characteristics are:

• On-Demand Self-Service Graphic representation of Cloud Computing showing a cloud in the center labeled with various services. Services include Servers, Networks, and Storage; Email and Calendaring; Web Two-point-oh services such as You Tube, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and Wikis; and Software Applications. Surrounding the cloud are individual user desktop stations all connecting to the cloud.
• Universal Network Access
• Pooled Cloud Provider Resources
• Rapid Flexibility
• Pay Per Use

The delivery models are:

• Infrastructure-As-A-Service
• Platform-As-A-Service
• Software-As-A-Service

The deployment models are:

• Private Cloud
• Community Cloud
• Public Cloud
• Hybrid Cloud

Several labs are exploring new collaborative social networking systems for communication with the public, for example Twitter (headlines with links), YouTube channel (video), and Flickr (photos) as distribution channels for news items.

Until now, cloud solutions have been primarily focused on running important business applications like CRM, ERP, email and other database programs. SGI has announced the world’s first large-scale, on-demand cloud computing service specifically dedicated to technical High Performance Computing (HPC) applications, codenamed Cyclone. Cyclone initially supports a number of leading applications partners and five technical domains, including computational fluid dynamics, finite element analysis, computational chemistry and materials, computational biology and ontologies.

Cyclone is available in two service models: Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). With the SaaS model, customers can significantly reduce time to results by accessing and fully exploiting Cyclone’s pre-defined, pre-certified technical applications. The IaaS model allows customers to install and run their own applications.

The SGI technology at Cyclone’s core is comprised of some of the world’s fastest supercomputing hardware architectures, including SGI® Altix® scale-up, Altix® ICE scale-out and Altix® XE hybrid clusters, all based on Intel® Xeon® or Itanium® processors. The hybrid architecture offers either NVIDIA® Tesla GPUs or AMD FireStream™ GPU compute accelerators for floating point double precision workloads, and Tilera accelerators for integer workloads. High performance SGI InfiniteStorage systems are available for scratch space and long-term archival of customer data.

At the system software level, Cyclone offers a flexible computing environment with the choice of Novell® SUSE® or Red Hat® Linux® operating systems, further performance-optimized through the addition of SGI® ProPack™. Altair PBS Professional® and SGI® ISLE™ Cluster Manager provide system scheduling and management.

With Cyclone’s SaaS model, SGI delivers access to leading-edge open source applications and best-of-breed commercial software platforms from top Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). Supported applications include: OpenFOAM, NUMECA, Acusolve, LS-Dyna, Gaussian, Gamess, NAMD, Gromacs, LAMMPS, BLAST, FASTA, HMMER, ClustalW and OntoStudio. SGI expects to add additional domains and applications partners over time.

According to a recent market report the U.S. Government Deep Packet Inspection market is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 36% from 2010 to about US$ 1.8 Billion by 2015.

The Cavium DPI Protocol Software utilizes extensive hardware acceleration in OCTEON Plus Multi-core MIPS processors, NITROX DPI Processors and OCTEON II processors to deliver unmatched performance which scales up to 40Gbps. It can detect and analyze hundreds of widely used protocols and can be dynamically updated in the field or at OEM customer for additional protocols. The DPI toolkit is targeted for manufacturers of networking, wireless and storage infrastructure equipment.

High Performance Deep Packet Inspection enables carriers to address these requirements by delivering newer billable services and tiered levels of service, preventing malicious traffic and monitoring the overall network and application health to ensure effective utilization.

The report projects the U.S. Government Deep Packet Inspection market to grow at a CAGR of 36% from 2010 to about US$ 1.8 Billion by 2015.