SGI, which in January announced its Altix 3000 family of servers and super clusters running a variant of Linux, this fall will start offering an enterprise-grade version of the open-source operating system.
The Mountain View, Calif., company—formerly known as Silicon Graphics Inc.—announced today it is entering into an OEM partnership with SuSE Linux AG in which the computer maker will bundle SuSEs Linux Enterprise Server 8 with the Altix 3000 systems running up to 64 Intel Corp. processors. The agreement also calls for SuSE to provide third-level support to SGI customers running the bundled package.
In addition, the two companies are working on efforts to scale Linux to 128 processors in a single-system configuration. Dave Parry, senior vice president and general manager for SGIs server and platform group, said the companies expect that to be available next year. Uwe Heine, chief alliance office for SuSE, said the deal will enable the company to reach customers—including super cluster centers, laboratories and manufacturing facilities—that it might not have had access to before.
SGI officials said it will enable them to bring a standard, fully supported Linux operating system to its high-performance computing and enterprise-class customers.
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