NEC Corp is continuing the scaling down process on its SX4 supercomputer range it began last year (CI No 3,054) with a new SX-4B super computer line, which come with two, three and four processor options. The new systems use a scaled down version of the IXS non blocking crossbar interconnection used on the company’s high end systems, which come with up to 512 processor systems, which it claims gives a transfer speed of 16Gb/second on each processor. The SX-4B delivers around 7.2GFLOPS for the four processor model, or 1.8GFLOPS per processor, which NEC claims makes the machine the fastest in its class. The basic single and dual processor models can handle up to 8Gb of external XMU memory, the NEC equivalent of Cray’s Solid State Disk add-on memory, although this can be extended to 16Gb in the two processor model by expanding the memory frame. The three and four processor models meanwhile, come with 16Gb memory. NEC says it’s also pushing a 0.9GFLOPS entry level system, the SX-4B/e, although this is only likely to be aimed at the Japanese market due to a lack of demand elsewhere. All systems run AT&T’s implementation of Unix SVR4, Super UX, with supercomputer extensions for handling larger files. The machine is designed for applications such as crash simulations, computational fluid dynamics and linear algebra. The company has so far sold around nine boxes outside Japan; customers so far include the University of Vienna, the Institute for Atmospheric Physics in Ostseebad Kuhlungsborn and car maker Volkswagen. NEC expects to go up against the likes of SGI with its Origin2000 machines, Hewlett Packard Co and IBM Corp. An entry level system with 2Gb of memory and 1Gb of extended memory costs in the region of $400,000.
