"Taking one step farther into the realm of Linux computing for the scientific and technical community, SGI announced the release of its mid-range Altix 350 server today. Based on its architecture, it may represent the first steps SGI will take towards the business arena as well.
"The 350, a smaller cousin of of the Altix 3000, is designed to tread in situations where the big-iron-like power of the 3000 is not needed, or may actually be a detriment.
"According to SGI's Director of Altix Marketing Andy Fenselau, the 350 was created to serve a specific need for SGI's target customer, the scientific, technical, and graphics communities.
"Big systems that have 128 processors or more, Fenselau explained, are best suited for massive, high-capability jobs that need sheer power of number-crunching. On the other end of SGI's customer spectrum are the homogeneous environments that use the same applications and the same job sizes over and over again, thus allowing smaller 32-bit clusters to be custom-built for these environments. Render farms was one example Fenselau gave..."
