Intel and NEC Corporation have entered into an alliance to jointly develop high performance computing (HPC) or supercomputing system technologies.
Supercomputers are used by scientists, doctors, non-profit organizations and businesses such as oil and gas exploration to speed research and testing.
NEC will bring jointly-developed technologies to market in future supercomputers based on the Intel Xeon processor. NEC's expertise in this field, coupled with the Intel Xeon processor's accelerating vector capabilities such as Advanced Vector eXtentions (AVX), will allow for higher performance supercomputers, satisfying customer demand for Intel architecture based products, the company said in a release.
NEC will also continue to sell their existing SX vector processor-based products. A vector processor can perform a mathematical operation on several numbers simultaneously.
"Intel's substantial investment in the Intel architecture, including the development of processors, chipsets, software compilers and other related products has expanded the usages of Intel Xeon processors in both the volume and high-end HPC market segments," said Richard Dracott, general manager of Intel's High Performance Computing Group. "Now, with NEC further innovating on Intel Xeon processor-based systems, Intel is poised to bring Intel Xeon processor performance to an even wider supercomputing audience."
"NEC's substantial experience in the development of vector processing systems, including vector pipeline management, memory sub-systems, and high-speed interconnect technology is a natural fit for taking Intel architecture further into new markets," said Fumihiko Hisamitsu, general manager of HPC Division at NEC.
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