| General Questions |
| Q1. |
Why ProLiant HPC Partner Software Suite? |
| A1. |
The Unified Cluster Portfolio, HP's strategic High Performance Computing cluster environment, provides a range of hardware and software solutions or our customers. The key aspect for the UCP is customer choice. Customer choice in size and type of hardware from Intel Xeon-based ProLiant servers in the Cluster Platform 3000, the AMD Opteron processor in the Cluster Platform 4000, and the Intel Itanium 2processor in the Cluster Platform 6000. Each of these offerings supports a software suite of both HP developed or Partner applications that are resold by HP and supported either by HP or our partners.
The ProLiant High Performance Computing Partner Software Suite is the partner suite of applications that complement or extend HP developed cluster offerings. The ProLiant HPC Partner Software Suite provides partner developed and supported cluster management, compilers, debuggers, job management, and parallel and cluster development tool kits This suite of selectable options allows the customer to select their products from the tested and certified partner driven applications and can be assured that they interoperate together.
In addition to the HPC Partner Suite , additional offerings supporting this environment are offered thru HP's Software Licensing and Management Solutions (SLMS) organization. For example, compilers in support of the HP workstations and desktop machines can be ordered thru SLMS as well as server compilers offered thru the HPC Partner Suite, supporting a mixed workstation, server and storage solution. This is also true for clustered and parallel storage management offerings, HP can provide compilers, storage management, grid management, and other independent software providers thru HP for a single point of order and control facilitating a smooth acquisition and implementation of a clustered solution.
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| Q2. |
How did HP select these partners? |
| A2. |
HP works across the industry investigating and analyzing partner software offerings. HP provides a range of partner programs supporting both hardware and software providers. In the case of the ProLiant HPC Partner Software Suite, HP selected the partners based on their industry presence, technology, and strategic fit to the industry standard climate that is emerging in this marketplace.
The market is shifting from proprietary UNIX and RISC solutions to Linux or Windows based cluster solutions that can provide superior price performance over comparable proprietary offerings.
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| Q3. |
Why support Linux and Windows offerings? Isn't this business Linux focused? |
| A3. |
The high performance computing business is evolving. In fact, IDC states that 11-17% of the high performance computing revenues are driven from Windows based desktops, servers and now clusters. The transition from UNIX to Linux is underway and HP is the number 1 provider of Linux servers in the industry and in the high performance computing environment as well.
We support both Red Hat and Novell SuSE Enterprise Linux offerings with special HPC pricing for our ProLiant DL and BL machines. We also provide a specially priced Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 offering . This Microsoft solution, certified on ProLiant clusters, also supports identified HPC Partner Suite offerings.
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| Q4. |
Why do you support multiple offerings in some areas? |
| A4. |
We support multiple offerings to provide our customers choices. Not every product meets the customer's immediate or future needs or there may be a corporate standard, so we provide many offerings across our ProLiant platforms. |
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| Compilers and Cluster Development Tools |
| Q1. |
Why Portland Group Tools? |
| A1. |
The Portland Group, Inc. (a.k.a. PGI) is the premier supplier of software compilers and tools for parallel computing, known on markets as PGIŽ products. The Portland Group offers high performance scalar and parallel Fortran, C and C++ compilers and tools for 32-bit X86 (AMD* Athlon* MP/XP, Intel* Pentium* 4 and Xeon*), 64-bit AMD64 technology (AMD Opteron*, Athlon 64 and Turion*) and 64-bit IA32 EM64T (Intel Pentium and Xeon with Enhanced Memory 64-bit Technology) processor-based workstations, servers and clusters. The focus of the Portland Group is to provide the highest perfromance , production quality compilers and software development tools to the High Performance Technical Computing market. The Portland Group is a wholly owned subsidiary of STMicroelecetronics.
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| Q2. |
What does HP Offer from PGI? |
| A2. |
HP offers a range of cluster development tool kits and Compilers for both commercial and academic customers. The PGI CDK Cluster Development Kit® for Linux now contains the PGDBG® OpenMP/MPI Linux Cluster graphical parallel debugger and the PGPROF® OpenMP/MPI Linux Cluster performance profiler. Many vendors support parallelization using simple add-on pre-processing technology, but the PGI CDK package offers the only Intel Pentium 4 and Xeon, AMD Athlon XP and Opteron parallel compilers, debugger and profiler available with parallelization support integrated directly into the compilers, debugger and profiler. The end result is faster development, higher performance and much higher reliability for the programmer.
In addition HP offers the PGI Compiler Suite for both Commercial and Academic users,PGI Server-class compilers and tools are for 64-bit x64 and 32-bit x86 processors processor-based servers with up to 16 multi-core CPU's running Linux or Windows operating systems. The PGI Server includes PGI high-performance compilers along with the PGDBG® OpenMP parallel graphical debugger and the PGPROF® OpenMP parallel graphical performance profiler. Together, they allow multiple users to compile, debug and profile on any compatible computer networked to the system on which the PGI compilers are installed (a network-floating license). Debugging and profiling are limite to a maximum of 16 multi-core processors. Executables produced by PGI Server limit the number of threads that will be used for OpenMP or auto-parallel programs. The maximum is equal to 16 times the number of cores within the processor on which execution is initiated. Executables can be executed on any compatible system regardless of whether the PGI compilers are installed.
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| Q3. |
What is Red Hat 5 Enterprise 8 Packs? |
| A3. |
Red Hat and HP has negotiated special pricing for licenses used in high performance computing environments. This is structured approach with a bundle of 8 licenses for the intial cluster and then single license kits, offering the customer a choice for the number of licenses they may need. These come with both one and three year Red Hat subscription service. |
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