In the News

SiCortex Gets Personal
Michael Feldman
April 11, 2008
Has SiCortex found the right formula for the personal supercomputer? Introduced in November 2007, the company's Catapult SC072 is a deskside mini-cluster that can be plugged into a standard wall outlet. Positioned as the entry-level system in the SiCortex family of MIPS processor-based supers, the Catapult has a modest 72 processors, 48 GB of memory, 2 gigabit Ethernet ports, and up to 3 PCI Express cards, each operating at a peak speed of 2 GB/sec. The enclosure has enough room for up to six standard disk drives. Oh, and it looks cool.

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jan. 7 -- eSilicon Corporation, a pioneering semiconductor Value Chain Producer (VCP), today announced a successful engagement with high-performance computing (HPC) innovator SiCortex that has enabled SiCortex to introduce a series of breakthrough products capable of up to 6 Teraflops performance with low power operating characteristics. The two companies worked together on the design and manufacture of a complete high performance computing system on a chip, a highly integrated device with more than 350 million transistors. The partnership resulted in a 20-month design-to-tape out cycle, saving SiCortex valuable time, resources and capital in introducing its debut product line.

Peddle Power: MIT Cyclocross Team Promotes Alternative Energy, Low-Power Computing
Robert Buderi
12/11/07
As the red, white, and black uniforms of the MIT Cycling Team bobbed up and down before me early this afternoon, I couldn’t help thinking: human abacus. Okay, the logic might be twisted (most folks here at Xconomy figure that’s a given when I start writing), but there is method to my madness. The cyclists, 10 of them, had gathered in the lobby of MIT’s Stata Center specifically to do some human-powered computing. Their bikes were hooked up to generators, and as the team members pedaled, they produced direct current energy. The generators, in turn, were connected to a converter that transformed that energy to alternating current, which was used to power a couple of small SiCortex supercomputers, which were running an application that simulated a fusion reaction.

Cosmic-Ray Detectors, Klystron Accelerators and More From SC07
Dave Bullock
November 16, 2007
The SiCortex 5832 (bottom left and right) is a 5-teraflop single-unit supercomputer. It uses low-power, custom 64-bit MIPS-processor packages (top right), which are basically entire computers on a single chip.

SiCortex wins Dev Connection "Sexiest in show" award
Ed Burnette
November 14th, 2007
Here’s one computer that looks like it belongs on the bridge of a starship: the SiCortex SC5832. It’s this year’s winner of the soon-to-be-coveted Dev Connection “Sexiest in show” award for SC07. And yes those lights do sweep across the front like a Cylon, or the star car in Knight Rider. The front even lifts up like the hood of a hot rod for easy access.

More's law — Desktop supercomputers are starting to arrive
November 13th 2007
PEOPLE always want more. That is a truism, but it is particularly true in the field of computing: more memory, more processing power, more speed, more everything. It is, perhaps, a neat linguistic coincidence that the rate at which this moreness is delivered is commonly known as Moore's law.

And that is exactly what SiCortex and Scalable Servers Corporation, two small American firms, plan to do. At the Supercomputing 07 conference in Reno, Nevada, this week, they unveiled their wares. Each has packaged something like a server cluster into a single box, to produce what each hopes will be a commercially viable desktop supercomputer.

Awards:
HPCwire Announces Annual Readers' and Editors' Choice Awards
24 organizations honored for high productivity computing technology leadership

RENO, Nev., Nov. 12 -- HPCwire, the leading source for global news and information covering the ecosystem of high productivity computing, revealed the winners of HPCwire's annual Readers' and Editors' Choice Awards at the 2007 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC07) in Reno, Nev.

SiCortex does desktop supercomputer

By Ashlee Vance

Supercomputing youngster SiCortex has done the inevitable by popping out a pint-sized version of its cluster in a container.

The new SC072 - code-named "Catapult" - fits 72 processors into a deskside unit that starts at less than $15,000. The system is a no brainer for SiCortex since it provides a more a digestible option for engineers, developers and those hoping to take the company's weird hardware for a test drive. In addition, the more compact unit lets SiCortex tap into a trend pioneered by now deceased Orion Multisystems of selling supercomputer class machines in a near PC form factor.

SiCortex Machine Gets Warm Reception at Argonne

By Michael Feldman

On Monday, the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Argonne National Laboratory became the proud owners of the first SiCortex SC5832 system deployed in the field. Introduced in November 2006, the SC5832, along with its smaller sibling, the SC648, represent a new approach to high performance computing. The SiCortex machines have garnered a good deal of critical acclaim over the past year, but this will be the first time the community will be able to see one operate with real applications. The 5.8 teraflop machine will be operated by Argonne's Mathematics and Computer Science (MCS) Division to further its mission in researching and developing software for high performance computing architectures.

PathScale Compiler Team Joins SiCortex

MAYNARD, Mass., Aug 1 -- SiCortex, the first company to engineer a Linux cluster from the silicon up, announced today that it has acquired the PathScale compiler business from QLogic Corp. PathScale's compiler team, along with certain intellectual property and business agreements, will join SiCortex. Fred Chow, who heads up the PathScale team at QLogic, will join SiCortex as director of compiler engineering.

PathScale compiler moves to SiCortex

Aug 2 2007
SiCortex announced on Wednesday that they’ve acquired the PathScale compiler technology and team from QLogic.

“This will allow PathScale LLC to focus on delivering even greater compiler performance and multicore processor scalability,” said Margaret Lewis, director,Commercial Solutions, AMD. “PathScale remains an important member of the ecosystem of AMD partners who are working with AMD to evolve multicore processing.”

Wee SiCortex buys PathScale compiler biz

QLogic decouples from code
By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View
Published Wednesday 1st August 2007 23:21 GMT
Supercomputing start-up SiCortex has bought PathScale's compiler business - software and people included - from QLogic

SiCortex will be unfamiliar to many of you. It's a start-up putting out a novel high performance computing design that combines close to 6,000 MIPS cores in a single system. The company has placed a major emphasis on lower power consumption while improving the internal communications of its box.

PathScale compilers move in at new HPC vendor SiCortex

SiCortex announced on Wednesday that they’ve acquired the PathScale compiler technology and team from QLogic. The move will certainly stabilize the MIPS side of this well-regarded compiler technology (SiCortex builds machines from MIPS processors), and the company has told customers that the X86-64 side is OK as well.

Friday, August 3, 2007

QLogic Sells Compiler Business To SiCortex

Maynard, Mass.-based SiCortex, a developer of Linux clustering products, said earlier this week that it has purchased Aliso Viejo-based QLogic's PathScale compiler business. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. PathScale develops C, C++, and Fortran 95 compilers for 64-bit Linux computer systems. QLogic's PathScale business was purchased by the firm in February of 2006, in a $109M cash deal, for PathScale's Infiniband clustering interconnect technology.

Linux supercomputer firm snags $10M funding

SiCortex, claiming to be the first company to engineer a Linux cluster from the silicon up, has secured $10 million in venture capital. The funds have arrived as the company "launches its super energy efficient high performance Linux cluster computers," SiCortex said.

SiCortex Secured $10 Million in Venture Debt

Published Wed, 2007-08-01 18:34 Corporate Finance
SiCortex secured $10 million in venture debt as it launches its super energy efficient high performance Linux cluster computers. The investment, from Hercules Technology Growth Capital, will help SiCortex accelerate production and sales and marketing efforts in response to demand for its products.

Back to Basics on System Design

by Jud Leonard
Co-founder and CTO, SiCortex Inc.
Over the last decade or two, computer architectures seem to be moving towards greater and greater complexity. That complexity makes it next to impossible to create accurate models of their performance, and hence to design software that performs efficiently.

Startup takes Reg's coveted 'Top FLOP' award SiCortex's supercomputing sauce

By Ashlee Vance in Tampa
November 20 2006
SC06 SiCortex has bucked one of the more disturbing supercomputing trends - the disconnect between form and function.
The Massachusetts server start-up last week unveiled a system that would moisten the eyes of both Seymour Cray and John De Lorean. Its SC5832 crams 5,832 processor cores into a "Pimp My Cluster" chassis with lighted cabinet doors that rise like wings. The elegant SiCortex box stood out with ease among the mishmash of "industry standard" cluster jobbies at the Supercomputing '06 conference.

COMPUTERS: Startup tips X86 ASIC for clusters

By Rick Merritt
San Jose, Calif. -- Every good startup tries to practice a little technological jujitsu. By applying a bit of force in just the right place, a handful of people can knock a large and fast-moving industry sector slightly off balance and open up a new and significant opportunity. That's just what SiCortex Inc. (Maynard, Mass.) is attempting to do in the hot area of clustered servers for high-performance computing (HPC).

John Rollwagen Returns to High Performance Computing

SiCortex, a development-stage firm whose power- and space-saving Linux cluster architecture drew attention at SC06, recently named HPC industry veteran John Rollwagen as chairman of the board. Rollwagen, the former chairman and CEO of Cray Research, Inc., is now an investor and business advisor specializing in information technology. HPCwire asked Rollwagen what attracted him to SiCortex.

SiCortex Marches to a Different Drummer

Last month at SC06, SiCortex, Inc. introduced its family of ultra low power high performance Linux systems, based on MIPS processor technology. Selected as one of five "HPC Companies to Watch in 2007" by HPCwire, SiCortex has developed a unique system architecture that it says represents a "sea change in cluster computing." In this Q&A, the company's co-founders, John Mucci (CEO) and Jud Leonard (CTO), talk about the novel design of the SiCortex systems, how the design overcomes the limitations of conventional clusters, and how their offerings will fit into the HPC market.

Startup Challenges IBM, HP With $42 million in cash, SiCortex has built two power computers from scratch.

By C. Medford
November 8, 2006
SiCortex, a developer of high-performance computers, introduced two new Linux-based machines Wednesday that the company claims save money on power, run cooler, and are more efficient than the roll-your-own cluster of PCs that is now the state-of-the-art in high-performance computing.

SiCortex Supercomputers Beat the Heat with Unique Processor Design

By W. David Gardner
November 8, 2006
Supercomputers create super heat. One startup says that by designing its own processors its cluster computers can beat the overheating problem.

SiCortex Unveils Low Power HPC Cluster

SiCortex, a cluster computer start-up company, has introduced its family of ultra low power high performance Linux systems. SiCortex claims its design represents a sea change in cluster computing, enabling the proliferation of multi-teraflop computing to a wider range of users. The company will exhibit at the SC06 supercomputing trade show in Tampa November 13– 17.

From the Editor The x86 Dynasty

By Michael Feldman
The longevity of the x86 architecture is perhaps one of the most surprising achievements of the Information Age thus far. Nobody, probably not even its Intel inventors, envisioned the dominance it has attained in the industry. After more than 25 years, the lowly x86 rules the all-important desktop, laptop and server markets.