Bull to Supply the Most Powerful Civil Supercomputer in France to the CCRT, the Center for Research and Technology Computing

PARIS, December 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CCRT (Centre de Calcul Recherche et Technologie), the Center for Research and Technology Computing in France, has awarded Bull the contract to build a supercomputer delivering in excess of 43 teraflops (43 thousand billion operations a second).

The CCRT's supercomputer will be made available for the scientific and industrial communities to use in major areas of research, particularly aeronautical engineering, energy, life sciences and environmental research. In particular, the system will be used by the members of the CCRT, including the French Atomic Energy Authority (the CEA), Electricite de France (EDF) and three companies from the SAFRAN Group: SNECMA, Turbomeca and Techspace Aero.

The new supercomputer will comprise a cluster of Bull NovaScale servers, equipped with Intel(R) processors. It will be integrated into the CEA's computing complex to create one of the world's most significant scientific computing infrastructures enabling the research community to benefit from synergies between programs in defense, industry and other areas, as well as the fruits of the digital simulation program.

"The CCRT's decision to commission this new supercomputer signals our desire to ensure that France - and Europe more widely - has a computing complex that is fit to match the industrial and economic challenges we will have to face over the next few years," stressed Christophe Behar, President of the CCRT.

"We are very proud that the CCRT has chosen Bull. For us, it is the recognition of our ability to develop the innovative technologies that are so essential to maintain French and European sovereignty in areas that are vitally important for their future," commented Philippe Miltin, Vice-President of Bull's Products and Systems Division.

The CCRT's supercomputer, designed by Bull, will be made up of a cluster of NovaScale servers, including 848 processing nodes, and 26 dedicated I/O and systems administration nodes. Each node will feature four Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 dual-core processors. The system will be operated via an HPC platform specially optimized by Bull and featuring, notably: the Linux(R) operating system; NovaScale Master, the system administration software suite developed by Bull; the Intel development environment; and the Lustre(R) file system from CFS.

The NovaScale servers will be connected by a high-performance InfiniBand network, supplied by Voltaire. The data storage infrastructure, also designed and integrated by Bull, will offer in excess of 420TB of disk storage capacity.

"We are pleased that CCRT chose Bull NovaScale servers with Intel Itanium processors to deliver a leading European supercomputer dedicated to civil and industrial research", said Richard Dracott, Intel's General Manager for High Performance Computing, "The high performance and scale of dual-core Itanium processors will support breakthroughs in the research and innovation that CCRT delivers to France and the European community".

The CCRT supercomputer will be deployed in early 2007. Expansions of the system are planned to ensure that, by the end of 2008, it will deliver several tens of Teraflops of additional power.

About the CCRT

The CCRT (Centre de Calcul Recherche et Technologie or Center for Research and Technology Computing) is a high-performance computing center of excellence working particularly at digital simulation of reactors and combustion cycle installations, major research programs (most notably in climatic research and biological sciences), and the development of new technologies. Part of the French Atomic Energy Authority's Directorate of Military Affairs (CEA DAM), based at Bruyeres Le Chatel in the Ile de France since 2003, the CCRT is open to industrial partners and collaborations with the scientific community. This significant expansion of the CCRT's capacity will strengthen the Computing Complex sited at the heart of the TER@TEC competitiveness cluster dedicated to digital simulation and high-performance computing.

CCRT Contact

Martine Gigandet - Tel: +33(0)1-69-26-53-83 - martine.gigandet@cea.fr

About Bull, Architect of an Open World(TM)

As one of the leading European IT companies, Bull delivers open, flexible and secure information systems. The group helps public and private sector customers transform their information systems, applying its know-how and expertise in three main areas:

- Capitalizing on its extensive mainframe experience, Bull designs and produces robust, innovative and open servers, based on industry-standard technologies;

- Building on its alliances with leading ISVs and long-standing involvement with Open Source, Bull develops and implements flexible and interoperable application infrastructures which give business processes the freedom to evolve;

- Bringing together recognized expertise in end-to-end IT security, Bull secures data and exchanges that are so critical in preserving customers' business integrity.

Bull has a particularly strong presence in the public, healthcare, finance, telecommunications, manufacturing and defense sectors. Its distribution network and business partners cover more than 60 countries worldwide.

For more information visit: http://www.bull.com

Contact

Anne-Marie Jourdain - Phone: +33(0)1-30-80-32-52

e-mail: anne-marie.jourdain@bull.net

About Intel

Intel, the world leader in silicon innovation, develops technologies, products and initiatives to continually advance how people work and live. Additional information about Intel is available at http://www.intel.com/pressroom

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