NEC and Sun Microsystems to Combine Expertise and Innovation and Provide Cost-Effective Professional Services for High Performance Computing Customers

Santa Clara, Calif.- NEC Corporation of America, a premier provider of IT, network and identity management solutions, today announced the intent to work with Sun Microsystems, Inc. to provide high performance computing (HPC) professional services in North America. The goal is to provide turnkey HPC services for the mid-market at industry leading prices. Previously available only to large enterprises, now both mid-market and large enterprises have a choice when they want to leverage HPC applications.

The two companies have signed an agreement that allows NEC to do work on behalf of Sun for Sun clients and Sun to promote and sell NEC professional services. The collaboration leverages Sun’s Factory Integration expertise through it’s Sun Customer Ready Program and NEC’s software expertise available in many areas including computational fluid dynamics (CFD), computational structural mechanics (CSM), and computational chemistry and materials science (CCM) applications. NEC will port, tune, optimize, identify problem application bottlenecks, manage programs and deploy customer code - either as a proof of concept or a full-scale customer production deployment. With nearly 20 years of experience in this market, NEC also offers hosting, disaster planning, and security and network communications consulting.

“For a number of years, Sun has worked with NEC to deliver high performance computing professional services,” said Bjorn Andersson, director, HPC and Integrated Systems, Sun Microsystems. “This agreement will extend our marketing and sales capabilities enabling us to bring NEC’s expertise and Sun’s technology innovation to a broader market.”

NEC and Sun have already collaborated to create the fastest supercomputer in Asia: Tsubame at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech); and the two companies have recently implemented a supercomputer for Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research - Center of Weather Forecast and Climate Studies (CPTEC/INPE). With 1,100 processors and a speed of 4.5 Teraflop, the supercomputer will enable CPTEC/INPE to hold their position as one of the top 10-12 forecast centers of the world.

HPC is a specialized market for companies that need performance -- processing massive amounts of data at high speeds - above all else. Applications include weather/climate forecasting, seismic interpretation, and reservoir modeling and simulation for the oil and gas industry. NEC intends to focus on the energy/oil/gas, civilian government, manufacturing, and weather/climate industries - where the need for high performance computing is the greatest and growing the fastest.

“This collaboration with Sun provides HPC solution options for mid-market companies that were previously only afforded by the industry’s largest companies and research centers,” said Jeffrey Greenwald, business development manager, Advanced Technical Computing Center, NEC Corporation of America. “For mid-market companies in industries that require performance computing applications to both scale and compete, this agreement breaks the cost-prohibitive barrier of entry to implementing HPC solutions with medium-sized clusters.”

Services provided through the agreement will include:
Linux, Solaris and other OS software services such as porting and migration, performance enhancement and optimization, benchmarking and performance assessment, and Microsoft® Windows® Compute Cluster Server (W-CCS) support;
Remote resource services such as disaster recovery consulting, resource co-location / systems administration / operations management, and system staging and burn-in;
System services such as systems integration, security and systems integrity enhancement, and parallel storage file support (planning and deployment); and
Parallel file system services such as consulting, planning, deployment and support.

In addition, NEC and Sun are jointly marketing these professional services and will have a presence at these HPC events:
2007 ANSYS U.S. Regional Conference in Detroit, Michigan - September 10-11, 2007
Society Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) Annual International Exposition and 77th Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas - September 23-28, 2007
Supercomputing 07 in Reno, Nevada - November 12-15, 2007

For more information on the new services offering, visit www.necam.com/hpcps.