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Japan expands supercomputer cluster

The country's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology will add a Linux Networx system to its cluster.

Stephen Shankland Former Principal Writer
Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
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Stephen Shankland
Supercomputer maker Linux Networx has sold a system with 278 dual-processor servers to Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, the Bluffdale, Utah-based company said Wednesday. The Linux system will be used for bioinformatics and nanotechnology research. It will also perform some calculations previously handled by another system, the Tsukuba Advanced Computing Center SuperCluster.

The two supercomputers are linked in a "grid" and share the same storage equipment, built by Silicon Graphics Inc. The cluster addition and SGI storage together cost about $3 million, Linux Networx said. The Linux Networx machine uses 3.06GHz Intel Xeon processors and the company's Linux cluster management software.