Johannesburg, 24 Apr 2003
Intel Corporation and HP recently announced that BP, one of the world`s largest petroleum and petrochemicals companies, has added new and additional computing capabilities to its advanced seismic research facility. The research facility will benefit from the addition of HP Intel Itanium 2-based systems running Linux, resulting in dramatically faster seismic imaging.
Based in Houston, BP`s advanced seismic research centre now includes a high-performance computing (HPC) cluster of 259 HP rx5670 systems with more than 1 000 Itanium 2 processors, providing a total of 4 teraflops and 8 000GB of memory, running under the Linux operating system. The HP Server rx5670 is part of HP`s broad portfolio of industry-standard Itanium-based hardware for enterprise customers. Using HP`s Itanium 2-based systems running Linux as well as Intel and HP software, compilers and tools, BP has achieved a significant increase in computing power, resulting in clearer images of the Earth`s subsurface structures and the hydrocarbons they contain.
"To achieve the most cost-effective and productive drilling procedure, we have to gather massive sets of seismic data and analyse them quickly and accurately," said Keith Gray, manager of BP`s HPC centre. "The combination of HP Itanium 2-based servers running Linux and software tools and services from Intel and HP gives us the power to produce better-defined results in a fraction of the time."
"The BP seismic solution illustrates the growing momentum for Itanium 2-based systems in heavy-duty enterprise computing," said John Davies, vice-president of Intel`s Solutions Market Development Group. "By using Itanium 2-based systems to run one of the most powerful commercial computing centres in the world, BP is able to take advantage of the world-class reliability, scalability and power provided by the Itanium 2 processor."
"Itanium 2-based solutions are increasingly becoming the platform of choice for highly demanding applications in the technical and commercial marketplaces as they save customers valuable time and money," said Mark Hudson, vice-president of Marketing for HP`s Business Critical Systems. "By deploying Itanium 2-based HP systems running Linux, BP is able to assess and manage the search for hydrocarbons more efficiently, while also reducing the risk inherent in exploration and development."
Moore`s Law - conceived by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1968 - has pushed the performance of Intel-based computing platforms to the forefront of scientific and business innovation, helping to slash computing costs and expand high performance computing beyond the confines of proprietary supercomputers to a more mainstream production environment. Intel-based solutions are rapidly becoming the platform of choice because of their outstanding price/performance and scalability, support for open source development, and extended, multi-vendor environment.
The Intel Itanium 2 processor is the second in the Itanium processor family, a line of enterprise-class processors from Intel that brings the performance and volume economics of Intel architecture to the most data-intensive business-critical and technical computing applications. The Itanium processor family enables a broad choice of reliable platforms and software for high-end servers and workstations at significantly lower cost with better performance than many proprietary offerings.
Additional information
An article about BP`s HPC centre appears in the April 2003 issue of Frontiers, BP`s group magazine of technology and innovation. The article, written by the magazine`s editor Terry Knott, may be read at www.bp.com/frontiers.
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