neray@Alliant.COM (Phil Neray) (12/13/90)
The "Attack of the Killer Micros" continues ...
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ALLIANT COMPUTER SYSTEMS CORPORATION
ACHIEVES HIGHEST LINPACK RATING
Jack Dongarra Report Records Alliant As Best
LINPACK Performer For Supercomputers Under $2 Million
LITTLETON, Mass., December 6, 1990--Alliant Computer
Systems Corporation (NASDAQ/ALNT) has achieved the
highest LINPACK 1000 rating of any supercomputer in the
under $2 million price range.
LINPACK ratings measure and compare the performance of
computer systems used primarily in scientific and engineering
disciplines. According to the LINPACK benchmark's founder,
Jack J. Dongarra of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville,
LINPACK measurements have a high percentage of floating-
point arithmetic operations which are common to these types of
applications. The LINPACK 1000 is often used on larger
computing problems typically solved with supercomputers, since
it requires solving over 1000 different variables in 1000
simultaneous equations.
A $1.4 million 14-processor Alliant FX/2800 RISC-based,
parallel supercomputer achieved a rating of 295 MFLOPS
(millions of floating point operations a second) on the LINPACK
1000 tests published in Dongarra's November 6, 1990 report,
Performance of Various Computers Using Standard Linear
Equations Software. This compares to 166 MFLOPS for a high-
end $2.2 million Convex Computer Corporation C240. Both the
Alliant and Convex systems have memory sizes of 256
MBYTES.
Alliant's system achieved 91% of the performance of a $3
million Cray Y-MP with one processor, and 25% of a $13
million Cray Y-MP four processor model. Results published in
the same report indicated 282 MFLOPS and 284 MFLOPS,
respectively, on IBM 3090/380J and 3090/300J systems, both
with vector processors, both of which are list priced at a
minimum of $7 million.
"The LINPACK results prove that supercomputers powered by
today's standard RISC microprocessors meet or exceed the
performance of traditional proprietary supercomputers. Our
FX/2800, using standard 64-bit Intel 860 microprocessors, costs
less than $2 million and solves supercomputer-class problems
very quickly," said John Scanlon, Alliant's vice president of
marketing. "The cost of achieving results is being reduced
dramatically."
Alliant Computer Systems Corporation manufactures standards-
based parallel supercomputers with visualization tools that enable
scientists and engineers to quickly interpret and solve complex
problems.
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Phil Neray Domain: neray@alliant.com
Alliant Computer Systems UUCP: {mit-eddie|linus}!alliant!neray
Littleton, MA 01460 Phone: (508) 486-1429