Bull steps up its commitment to Green Computing with the use of the newest-generation Intel® processors

Having ordered several thousand of the latest Intel® Xeon® 5500 processors for use in its European-built supercomputers, Bull is now set to incorporate these for all the servers in its NovaScale® family

Paris, March  31, 2009 -

Bull is today announcing that the Intel® Xeon® 5500 processor (codename: 'Nehalem') is to be made available on its NovaScale family of servers. With this move, Bull is affirming its commitment to speed up the transition from traditional server architectures towards much higher performance and more energy-efficient infrastructures.

"Having incorporated several thousand Intel® Xeon® 5500 processors into very large-scale supercomputers which we are currently delivering across Europe, we have now built up a unique body of experience in using these new processors at Bull," explains Philippe Miltin, Vice President of Bull's Products and Systems Division. "Our customers' Data Centers will also benefit greatly from our new, much more powerful and energy-efficient NovaScale servers, which will help to reduce their IT infrastructure costs still further."

Lower power consumption, low heat dissipation, and higher performance and density

Equipped with two 4-core Intel® Xeon® 5500 processors, eight of the models in Bull's NovaScale family will benefit from the improved price/performance ratio offered by these twin socket servers. The lower power consumption and heat dissipation of the new processors also means performance-per-watt is better than the previous-generation Intel® Xeon® processors by a factor of two, and almost six times better than those available in 2005.

The new range of eight Bull NovaScale servers is available in tower, rack and blade configurations, to cover the full range of requirements associated with current evolutions in High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Data Center infrastructures.

Ultra-dense HPC server equipped with 4 Intel® Xeon® 5500 four-core processors in a 1U rack

With its NovaScale R422E2 server, Bull offers one of the highest density available on the market today, with two motherboards - each with two four-core Intel® Xeon® 5500 processors - in a single 1U rack. The new server delivers the highest level of performance required by HPC applications in areas such as fundamental and applied research, and computer simulation.

Blade server for the Data Center features low-voltage processors and SSD disks

Bull's innovation continues with the launch of its NovaScale BL265LV (Low Voltage) blade server, equipped with four-core Intel® Xeon® 5500 processors which use 60% less electricity compared with an equivalent rack server. The new model is also equipped with Solid State Disks (SSDs), which also use 87% less energy than traditional storage solutions.

Optimized server for virtualization

With its enterprise-class I/O capability (6 PCI slots, plus 3 LAN slots), the NovaScale R460E2 servers offers double the performance and memory capacity. Bull has integrated this server into its VMBox virtualization solution in order to double the number of virtual machines it can manage. VMBox is a customized solution built to meet each customer's specific requirements, including Bull NovaScale servers and StoreWay storage, VMware's Infrastructure offering and a systems administration platform supporting VMware vCenter and Bull System Manager. The whole set-up can be configured according to the profile of the applications that need to be virtualized and the quantity of associated data, and it can be included as part of a Disaster Recovery Plan.

Rapid implementation and optimized Data Center operation

Thanks to the industrial-scale integration and manufacturing services provided by Bull Industrial & Logistics Services at Angers in France, massive infrastructures featuring several hundreds or even thousands of Bull NovaScale servers can be pre-integrated, in order to reduce the time taken to deploy them within the Data Center.

As part of its Bio Data Center^TM initiative - which advocates the establishment of optimized Data Centers that can be operated on a large scale and with a smaller carbon footprint - Bull has perfected a Data Center management software suite based on Bull System Manager and Cassatt Active Response. These solutions will immediately work alongside the new Bull NovaScale series, in order to optimize the operation of very large-scale infrastructures.

About Bull

Bull is a leader in secure mission-critical digital systems. The Group is dedicated to developing and implementing solutions where computing power and security serve to optimize its customers' information systems, to support their business.

Bull operates in high added-value markets including computer simulation, Cloud computing and 'computing power plants', outsourcing and security.

Currently Bull employs around 9,000 people across more than 50 countries, with over 700 staff totally focused on R&D. In 2011, Bull recorded revenues of €1.3 billion.

For more information visit: http://www.bull.com
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