Cluster to be used by Entire Scientific Community at Lab

SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 18, 2002 - Linux NetworX announced today it has delivered an Evolocity II (E2) Linux cluster to Argonne National Laboratory that is capable of performing more than one trillion calculations per second (1 teraFLOP). The cluster, named "Jazz" by Argonne, is designed to provide optimum performance for multiple disciplines such as chemistry, physics and reactor engineering and will be used by the entire scientific community at the Lab. The cluster ranks among the fastest in the world, and is the first supercomputer to provide a sustained teraFLOP to Argonne.

"The Jazz cluster designed and built by Linux NetworX is both highly reliable and extremely configurable, which is essential since every division at Argonne will be using this system," said Remy Evard, director of the Laboratory Computing Resource Center at Argonne National Laboratory. "We selected Linux NetworX because they offered the ideal hardware configuration, unparalleled expertise in Linux clusters and the respect of our industry peers."

"This new computer will enable the rapid development of computational science at the laboratory," said Hermann Grunder, director of Argonne National Laboratory. "The flexibility and power of Jazz will open up new opportunities for discovery in many fields."

The Linux NetworX cluster will be part of the Laboratory Computing Resource Center at Argonne and is designed for multiple application domains including genomic sequencing analysis, turbulence modeling, molecular electronic structure and climate simulation. In order to facilitate multiple uses, the cluster has two separate disk arrays, offering 10 terabytes of disk space for parallel I/O, and 10 terabytes of disk space for programs and permanent data. Each node utilizes the Linux NetworX E2 node design, LinuxBIOS and ICE (TM) cluster management tools.

"The production cluster built for Argonne National Laboratory demonstrates the performance and flexibility of Linux NetworX clusters," said Stephen Hill, president of Linux NetworX. "This is another teraFLOP system for Linux NetworX, showing our commitment to leading Linux clusters into the next era of supercomputing."

About Argonne National Laboratory The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory supports basic and applied scientific research across a wide spectrum of disciplines, ranging from high energy physics to climatology and biotechnology. Since 1990, Argonne has worked with more than 600 companies and numerous federal agencies and other organizations to help advance America's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for the future. Argonne is operated by the University of Chicago as part of the U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory system.

About Linux NetworX

Linux NetworX (www.linuxnetworx.com) brings its powerful cluster solutions and empowering management tools to those demanding high performance and high availability systems. Linux NetworX provides solutions for organizations involved in oil and gas exploration, aeronautical and chemical modeling, biotechnology research, graphics rendering and visual effects, Web serving, ISPs, ASPs, and other technological research fields. Through its innovative Evolocity hardware, ICE cluster management tools and professional service and support, Linux NetworX provides end-to-end clustering solutions. To date, the company has built some of the largest cluster systems in the world, and boasts numerous Fortune 500 customers.

>Linux NetworX Supercomputer Ranked as Fifth Fastest in the World

Landmark System Uses Linux Cluster Technology

SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 18, 2002 - MCR, the cluster supercomputer Linux NetworX built for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was ranked today as the fifth fastest supercomputer in the world on the TOP500 supercomputing list (www.top500.org). The 2,304-processor cluster can process 5.694 trillion calculations per second (teraFLOPs) running the Linpak benchmark, and is the only Linux-based supercomputer to be ranked within the top five. A 361-node cluster Linux NetworX built for Argonne National Laboratory also broke the teraFLOP barrier, capable of 1.6 trillion calculations per second, and is ranked 46th on the TOP500 supercomputing list. The TOP500 lists the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world based on Linpak benchmark results.

"For the first time ever, clusters were able to gain a top ten spot in the TOP500 list of supercomputers. At position five, this is the largest Linux cluster ever recorded with a very impressive Linpack performance of 5.7 teraFLOPS," said Erich Strohmaier, computer scientist at NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and co-founder of the TOP500 list. "The system installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and built by Linux NetworX and Quadrics, is an important step in supercomputing history as it demonstrates the potentially large impact Linux clusters will have in the high performance computing community."

The emergence of Linux clusters in the supercomputing industry is highlighted in Supercomputing's Epic Journey, an illustrated timeline and article researched and written by International Data Corp. (IDC) and an independent research group. The foldout timeline and article will be distributed at the SC2002 conference and trade show in Baltimore this week at Linux NetworX booth #1909. Supercomputing's Epic Journey explores the history of supercomputing from some of the first vacuum tube computers in the 1940s and traces landmark systems and events that are leading to the most recent developments in the TeraFLOPs era and cluster computing.

"IDC has done a number of market studies of cluster computing and we see a large number of high performance technical users moving to clustered solutions," said Earl Joseph, research director at IDC. "We see Linux NetworX well positioned to take advantage of that market trend."

For more information about Supercomputing's Epic Journey or to request a free poster of the timeline, visit www.linuxnetworx.com/news/history

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About Linux NetworX

Linux NetworX (www.linuxnetworx.com) brings its powerful cluster solutions and empowering management tools to those demanding high performance and high availability systems. Linux NetworX provides solutions for organizations involved in oil and gas exploration, aeronautical and chemical modeling, biotechnology research, graphics rendering and visual effects, Web serving, ISPs, ASPs, and other technological research fields. Through its innovative Evolocity hardware, ICE cluster management tools and professional service and support, Linux NetworX provides end-to-end clustering solutions. To date, the company has built some of the largest cluster systems in the world, and boasts numerous Fortune 500 customers.