Scientific research centers have always been on the cutting edge of processor technology. The work they do often requires computing performance unfathomable to average computer users. Supercomputers, clusters of several hundred systems, and other solutions feed the scientific community's need for high-performance computing.

In the following white paper, technology researcher IDC discusses how Intel® Itanium®-based systems make a logical choice for organizations such as these that are in need of high-performance computing. Specifically, IDC calls the Itanium processor "one of the few unique new entries into the computer processor arena in the past decade."

IDC explores the features of the Itanium processor that address the requirements of scientific researchers, including superior floating-point performance, memory performance, and support for large data sets. The white paper also describes the experience of three major research centers with Itanium-based servers:

• The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), which currently employs a 512-node cluster containing 1,024 Pentium® processors and plans to implement a 320-processor, 160-node Itanium cluster.

• The Cornell Theory Center, which is porting applications to the Itanium platform and plans to operate a 32-node cluster with 128 Itanium processors.

• The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which is porting its critical simulation applications, used to analyze nuclear particles, to the Itanium architecture.

With research centers such as these already working with the Itanium processor, IDC expects other users of high-performance computing to follow suit.

Read the entire IDC white paper "Itanium® Enters the High-Performance Computing Universe."