14 DAY TRIAL // High performance computing is based on either x86 compatible hardware or some other more exotic standards like those made by IBM, Sun and so on, but the vast majority of servers around the world are based on x86 compatible processors made either by AMD or Intel. While the single processor server system still has a place on the high performance computing market, the number of two, four and multi way servers are increasing at a fast pace, thanks in part to companies like Aberdeen LLC and Supermicro Computer.
Aberdeen is a company specialized in custom server solutions while Supermicro Computer focuses itself of manufacturing and shipping high quality motherboards and other hardware components. The two hardware manufacturing companies recently joined forces in order to design, produce and deliver an innovative high performance computing solution. Aberdeen's Stirling 444 server system is centered around the 4-way quad-core Intel Xeon Processor 7300 series and it is designed for enterprise server markets like grid computing, high performance computer clusters, HPC for short and EPCI setups, which stands for Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing. "We are excited about our new 4x4 server, and feel that the Stirling 444 can maneuver through the toughest of computational terrains." states Moshe Ovadya, President of Aberdeen, who was cited by the news site hpcwire.
Because of its 4x4 internal hardware architecture the Aberdeen's Stirling 444 server system is able to accommodate 16 core processing units and combine their computing power in order to create a supercomputer which is well suited for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as quantum mechanical physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling, flight simulations, AI, graphic rendering and 3D modeling. As the server is based on a quad core multiprocessor architecture it is able to multitask at an increased level of performance and it can off load certain tasks to specific cores, thus resulting a higher than normal productivity more so since the Aberdeen Stirling HPC servers support a fast 1066MHz frontside bus.
Following the global industry trend of reducing the power consumption of servers, the two manufacturing companies that designed the 4x4 server system came up with a number of energy saving technologies like a second redundant 1200W power supply unit which is activated only if the main high efficiency power supply is damaged. The quad core Intel Xeon 7300 processors come with 8MB of cache memory each and the server supports up to 192GB of fully-buffered DDR2 random access memory as well as a SAS storage solution which is coupled with a serial ATA interface for all hard disk drives. The 4x4 Aberdeen's Stirling 444 server system comes with a starting price tag of around $8000 and it is available in 1U, 2U and 4U rackmount sizes.