Ten-Fold Expansion of Computing Power Puts Oxford into Supercomputer Premier League

Business Wire, April 25, 2007

Pillar Axiom Selected to Provide Dedicated Storage System for Oxford University Supercomputer

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The Oxford e-Research Centre (OeRC) is set to enter the global Supercomputer premier league with the creation of an enhanced supercomputing centre at Oxford University. This will be housed in a brand new facility designed to handle the most complex computer modelling projects, including advanced climate simulation and prediction and the latest medical research.

The Oxford Supercomputer systems will carry out 15 trillion calculations per second, with some applications able to generate the equivalent of nearly 600 copies of the Oxford English Dictionary on CD in a single hour. The Pillar Axiom[TM] storage system, a network attached storage (NAS) system, handles all of this information as the Supercomputer works through the most complex of mathematical models.

"In order to handle the ten-fold increase in computing power and all of the associated increase in data, the storage system has to be flexible and efficient," said Dr. Jon Lockley, centre manager at the Oxford Supercomputing Centre. "One day our systems could be trying to crack the make-up of complex proteins, the next it could be predicting climate change in 50 or 100 years. Therefore, the ability to expand and reconfigure the storage easily is vital. The type of data, volume and speed at which the storage system needs to handle the results varies dramatically from project to project."

"The Pillar Axiom provides the team at Oxford with 'what if?' predictability modelling within the array," said Paul Sleep, sales director at NexStor. "This ensures the team is able to maintain performance should additional tasks be added, bringing more capacity and more storage horsepower online. The Axiom proved its flexibility, showing how easily it could adapt as storage demands changed, as well as its green credentials of energy efficiency and reduced space requirements."

"Oxford University has always been at the cutting edge of research, and the Pillar Axiom system will sit at the core of its Supercomputer network," said Brenda Zawatski, senior vice president, worldwide sales and marketing, Pillar Data Systems. "In conjunction with key partner NexStor, we have been working closely with the Oxford e-Research Centre since early 2006. The team at the Supercomputing Centre was able to install an Axiom and run it in its actual environment before committing to any purchase."

As computing power increases, scientists and engineers are able to solve more of today's medical, environmental and scientific problems. Oxford's system will boost the UK's computing power and provide an invaluable research resource to the country's scientific community.

About Oxford e-Research Centre

The Oxford e-Research Centre (OeRC) works with research units across the whole of Oxford University to enable the use and development of innovative computational and information technology in multidisciplinary collaborations.

With a core staff of researchers, developers and support staff the OeRC operates as a hub for e-Research activities across the University, building a community around e-Research at Oxford. The Centre is strongly linked to the UK's national e-Science programme, while national and international collaborations will ensure that activities at Oxford are aligned with e-infrastructure developments nationwide and abroad.

For more information visit: http://www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/

About NexStor

Founded in 2004, NexStor Ltd. is one of the UK's leading data systems integrators with a proven track record of driving down the costs associated with information ownership. NexStor approach data challenges by identifying areas within an organization which will benefit from the use of proven data storage & data management solutions & techniques. Being independent from our technology vendors enables our approach to be as open and forward thinking as possible: having more than one solution to most business issue sets NexStor apart in the data storage market space.

NexStor have offices in Nottingham & Southampton and have clients UK wide, as well as Europe, the Middle East & the U.S.

About Pillar Data Systems

Founded in 2001, Pillar Data Systems develops enterprise network storage systems. The company's Pillar Axiom solution, driven by its innovative policy-based management capabilities, integrates SAN and NAS into a centrally managed storage platform. Pillar Axiom systems consolidate multiple tiers of enterprise network storage into a single, easily managed system capable of scaling to hundreds of terabytes of capacity.

Pillar Data Systems is privately funded by Tako Ventures, LLC, the venture arm of Larry Ellison. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California with a development office in Longmont, Colorado. The EMEA headquarters is in Drogheda near Dublin, with initial operations across Ireland, UK, Germany and France.

Pillar Data Systems, Pillar Axiom, and the Pillar logo are all trademarks of Pillar Data Systems. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.