In the News

SiCortex, the first company to engineer a Linux cluster from the silicon up, announced today that it has acquired the PathScale compiler business from QLogic Corp. PathScale's compiler team, along with certain intellectual property and business agreements, will join SiCortex. Fred Chow, who heads up the PathScale team at QLogic, will join SiCortex as director of compiler engineering.

Purdue University this summer installed a new kind of supercomputer made by SiCortex of Boston that uses 40 times less power than a traditional supercomputer does. Argonne National Laboratory also has one.

Traditional supercomputers are like huge diesel trucks: They are powerful and can carry a big load. But a new type of supercomputer installed this week at Purdue University, built by SiCortex, is like employing a fleet of thousands of bike messengers: Individually they don't carry much freight, but they use less energy and are more effective in some situations.

In general, processors for embedded application are designed for low power rather than speed, but they offer HPC vendors an alternative way to build large-scale energy-efficient systems. SiCortex, for example, is using MIPS processors to create a low-power line HPC clusters.

SiCortex, the emerging leader in compact, low-power Linux clusters, is demonstrating the advantages of dense, low-power supercomputing by installing and operating its 1,458-processor SC1458 right within the conference's exhibit hall. "It used to be that systems with this many processors required their own building, and took months to install," said John Goodhue, vice president of marketing at SiCortex. "We will roll the SC1458 into our booth and operate it throughout the conference." The SC1458 provides more than twice the performance of the SC648 that the company operated at ISC'07, with no increase in footprint.