New SGI Server and Storage Solutions Help French Oil and Gas Leader Maximize Drilling Opportunities SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 21
SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- In a global effort to
extract the greatest value from subsurface oil and gas reservoirs, the
Exploration and Production Branch at French oil and gas leader Total recently
expanded its already extensive computing and storage capabilities with SGI
(Nasdaq: SGIC) technology. The move is expected to allow Total to maximize its
return on exploration investments throughout the world.
Total purchased an SGI(R) Altix(R) ICE system enabling computing power of
123 Teraflops, a petabyte of storage (500TB of SGI(R) InfiniteStorage storage
systems and an additional 500TB for shared storage with other cluster
resources), providing timely access to data needed for its oil exploration and
production planning. At Total's technical center in Pau, France, researchers
can simultaneously conduct detailed seismic analysis on more drilling
opportunities. The new resources allow the Pau facility to better help Total's
more than 40 subsidiaries confidently identify and develop onshore and
offshore oil and gas prospects. Total uses seismic analysis applications
developed in its research and development department to generate a digital
image of the subsurface structure of the prospect or field under evaluation.
"Drilling cost increases justify significant investment in seismic
processing capabilities to better model subsurface structure. As a result,
Total has invested in one of the most powerful computers in the world and will
continue adding compute capacity over the next years," said Philippe Chalon,
Senior Vice President, Finance and Information Systems at Total Exploration
and Production. "And by extending our investment in SGI storage solutions
gives us optimal flexibility in accessing and managing up to 2 petabytes of
seismic data on current and future exploration prospects. With this latest
acquisition of compute and storage capability, we are enhancing our own
technology and economic leadership, both of which are critical in the very
highly competitive oil and gas business."
Total's new SGI Altix ICE system, ordered in December, is powered by
10,240 Intel(R) Xeon(R) cores, each with 2GB of system memory and is expected
to be fully installed in Summer 2008. The new server taps 500TB of SGI
InfiniteStorage 10000 storage system via a Lustre distributed file system.
Another part of this project is the implementation of a separate Lustre
cluster, providing access to 1 petabyte of storage for instant data sharing
for increased productivity among the company's existing installation of HPC
servers.
"Energy industry computational needs are escalating," said Bo Ewald, chief
executive officer, SGI. "With data sets commonly surpassing 10TB in size, the
oil and gas industry needs performance solutions for its computational and
data driven problems, along with the ability to leverage the expertise of
individuals scattered across the globe, to make informed investment and
management decisions about oil and gas discovery and production. SGI offers
the energy industry a combination of compute, storage and visualization
technologies that no other vendor can match."
"Total is using leading-edge technology to extend its competitive edge
well into the future," said Christian Morales, Vice President and General
Manager of Intel EMEA. "By deploying SGI servers based on Intel multi-core
processors using state of art power-saving technologies, Total acquires
unprecedented power for finer-grained seismic exploration and evaluation."
SGI | Innovation for Results(TM)
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