Sun Picked for 'Flight & Flow' Sim

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:JAVA) has won the first contract in Germany for the installation of a high performance computing (HPC) cluster for commercial applications based on Sun's Petascale architecture. The Petascale architecture was developed in-house at Sun under the name "Sun(TM) Constellation System," and was presented to the public for the first time at the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany last year. The Center for Computer Applications in Aerospace Science and Engineering (CA²S²E), supported by Airbus, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the state of Lower Saxony, is investing EUR 5.2 million in the new supercomputer that has a compute capacity of 46.6 TFlops.

With the support of its partner T-Systems, DLR searched for a platform that could perform complex numerical flow simulations necessary for the C²A²S²E project. Christian Schweitzer, Head of T-Systems Service Center Nord, explained the process: "We created a list of specifications and issued them to three well-known suppliers. The key requirements included the highest possible number of processors and an efficient technological update after three years. Sun impressed DLR in both areas."

Sun Microsystems Inc.