BRISTOL, England, Oct. 30 -- ClearSpeed Technology, the world leader in acceleration for high performance computing (HPC), and its Japanese distribution partner, Nissho Electronics, have been awarded an order to supply ClearSpeed Advance X620 accelerator boards to Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) for use in its Molecular Dynamics Simulation Acceleration System known as TSUBAME.

"As a next stage in the increased quality of service to our HPC users at our GSIC center at Tokyo Tech., we are procuring additional ClearSpeed acceleration cards from Nissho Electronics," said Professor Satoshi Matsuoka of the Global Scientific Information and Computing Center (GSIC) of Tokyo Tech. "This was a natural choice, given our prior experience as Asia's #1 supercomputer TSUBAME, the world's first accelerated system to make the Top 10 in the Top500 list. The new cards will also be hosted by TSUBAME alongside the originals, greatly increasing our real-world problem-solving abilities, in areas such as materials science and life sciences."

Tokyo Tech had planned from the outset that this new system could have its performance upgraded to meet new computing needs, and this order is the first such upgrade. In order to achieve this, Tokyo Tech was looking for a high performance, energy-efficient, IEEE 754 accurate, easy-to program accelerator able to solve real-world science problems, requirements which ClearSpeed's technology has met. In addition, it was important that the accelerator pass the benchmark requirement of performing the Generalized Born 1 and 2 files for the popular molecular modeling application Sander Amber 9.

With this performance increase as a result of ClearSpeed acceleration, Tokyo Tech maintains the fastest Accelerated Supercomputer in the world which remains highly power and space efficient. The capability of ClearSpeed's boards to be installed and add performance, while making no difference to the size of the system and a minimal difference to its power consumption and cooling was important at the time of the initial order and equally important for this order.

"We are pleased to work with our partner, ClearSpeed, to provide our expertise and support our local University by adding to its already strong reputation of being one of the top academic institutions in the world," said Masahiko Someya, general manager, Nissho Electronics. "By adding extra ClearSpeed acceleration we hope to see TSUBAME remain as the top supercomputer in Asia for years to come."

The TSUBAME supercomputer is one of the highest performance university-based computing clusters built to date. The supercomputer is used for compute-intensive applications in a variety of research areas, including bio-science, nano-science, environmental, and disaster prevention simulations. The system is intended to be accessible to every professor and student at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, as well as to a wide range of researchers throughout the world.

"We congratulate Nissho Electronics on this excellent win to deliver increased ClearSpeed acceleration to TSUBAME," said Tom Beese, ClearSpeed CEO. "This is a key order for us as not only is the TSUBAME system one of the highest performance supercomputers worldwide. The order is a clear confirmation of the value of our technology both at the time of first purchase of a system and in upgrades throughout its life."

About Nissho Electronics

Since its founding in 1969, Nissho Electronics has brought the world's most advanced technologies to an ever-widening segment of the Japanese market. Headquartered in Tokyo, the company has annual consolidated revenues approaching $540 million. With extensive experience and expertise built on strong market-leading customer and cutting-edge partner relationships, Nissho Electronics focuses on providing clients with practical IT solutions. As a strategic partner, Nissho resources are focused on meeting client needs.

About ClearSpeed

ClearSpeed Technology is a semiconductor company that develops massively parallel coprocessors and accelerator boards delivering unmatched performance per watt for high performance computing applications on industry standard systems. ClearSpeed has offices in San Jose, Calif. and Bristol, UK and has over 50 patents granted with additional pending. For more information, visit www.clearspeed.com.

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Source: ClearSpeed Technology