SRC Computers Launches Its Next-Generation Reconfigurable High Performance Computing System; The SRC-7 Breaks Through the Last Technical Barriers to Widespread Adoption of General Purpose Reconfigurable Computing

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 23, 2005--SRC Computers, Inc., a leader in reconfigurable computing systems, today announced the availability of its SRC-7 general purpose system featuring the first reconfigurable processor with IEEE compliant floating point blocks and accompanying high bandwidth interconnect. The lack of dedicated low latency floating point capability with enough memory bandwidth to prevent stalling has historically been viewed as the last technical barrier to widespread adoption of general purpose reconfigurable computing. The SRC-7 succeeds the SRC-6 and provides the most powerful, programmer-friendly, reconfigurable, high performance system on the market. SRC's Carte(TM) programming environment allows programmers to use standard ANSI C and Fortran to program its reconfigurable MAP(R) processors with no need for hardware design expertise. The announcement of the SRC-7 was made at the High Performance Reconfigurable Computing Workshop being held at the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center in Fairbanks, Alaska.

The increased performance of the SRC-7 series H MAP reconfigurable processors is highlighted by:

-- The first dedicated reconfigurable  -- The largest per processor...
   double precision floating point        -- On-board SRAM at 80    
   capability with...                        Mbytes;        
   -- 112 double precision floating       -- Total on board memory at 
      point operations per clock             2 Gbytes; and         
      per processor; and                  -- Reconfigurable logic   
   -- 224 single precision floating          capacity at 64 Mgates.  
      point operations per clock                                
      per processor.                                           


-- The highest per processor...        -- The capability for high    
   -- Floating point performance;         bandwidth mass storage... 
   -- Sustained external memory           -- Sustained disk bandwidth 
      payload bandwidth at 14.4              3.6 Gbytes per second;
      Gbytes per second;                  -- 10K random IOPS per 
   -- Sustained on-board SRAM                assembly;             
      payload bandwidth at 24             -- 32 Terabytes per      
      Gbytes per second; and                 assembly;             
   -- Sustained direct GPIO               -- Accessible directly from
      payload bandwidth at 10.3              MAP; and          
      Gbytes per second.                  -- Addressable through the 
                                             system's 64-bit virtual 
                                             address space.         

“Since 2002, when we shipped our first SRC-6 system with Carte, programmers have been able to control both commodity and reconfigurable processors, using standard high level languages such as C, and attain orders of magnitude more performance”

"Once again SRC is showing the way in the world of reconfigurable computing," said Dr. Duncan A. Buell, Interim Dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of South Carolina. "Previous machines were sometimes memory access limited for parallel applications. But with its high bandwidth interconnect, large volume of close memory, plenty of parallel memory references, and dedicated floating point units, the SRC-7 is very impressive and possibly the most powerful reconfigurable machine for general purpose computation."

Dr. Jeff Vetter, Future Technologies Group Leader at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, commented: "Since the installation of the first SRC system with MAP here in 1999, and more recently with our purchase of an SRC-6, ORNL has been investigating the applicability of reconfigurable processing to computational science. We are currently working to port a variety of biology and nanoscience applications to the SRC-6 and believe that the SRC-7 is designed to deliver unprecedented floating-point performance for key scientific applications."

The SRC-7 product line includes large-scale multi-processor systems, the MAPstation(TM) line of workstations, portable high-performance systems, and embedded offerings. The first SRC-7 MAPstations are expected to be available in the first quarter of 2006, with large-scale systems and servers following in the first half of 2006. SRC will continue to offer and support the SRC-6 series based on customer demand, and applications developed for SRC-6 systems are software compatible with the SRC-7. SRC systems are currently employed in a variety of market segments including defense, energy, scientific research, intelligence, molecular dynamics, bio-informatics, biometrics, image processing, real-time sensor processing, and geospatial mapping.

"Since 2002, when we shipped our first SRC-6 system with Carte, programmers have been able to control both commodity and reconfigurable processors, using standard high level languages such as C, and attain orders of magnitude more performance," said Jon Huppenthal, President and CEO of SRC. "With the introduction of the SRC-7, SRC clearly takes a commanding lead in all aspects of general purpose reconfigurable computing."

SRC is the only reconfigurable system vendor that provides this tightly integrated high-level language programming environment with both development and debug capability. As with the current SRC-6 product line, no hardware design knowledge is required by the programmer to use the SRC-7.

About SRC

SRC Computers, Inc. is a privately owned company established in 1996 by legendary computer architect Seymour Cray. SRC has developed an IMPLICIT+EXPLICIT(TM) architecture that provides orders of magnitude increases in performance over conventional microprocessors. Because this SRC-developed software and hardware architecture is applicable to products ranging from uniprocessor handheld devices to large-scale multiprocessor computer systems, SRC is able to offer solutions targeted at the high performance server and workstation markets as well as the embedded markets.

In addition to its headquarters in Colorado Springs, SRC also maintains a software development facility in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Carte, MAPstation, IMPLICIT+EXPLICIT, and MAP are trademarks or registered trademarks of SRC Computers, Inc. SRC's website is located at www.srccomputers.com.

Note to Editors: If you would like more information about SRC Computers or would like to schedule an interview with Mr. Huppenthal regarding this release, please call Valerie Jackson at 719-785-5119 or e-mail [e-mail].