Defense Department Buys HP Computers To Design WeaponsDefense Department Buys HP Computers To Design Weapons

IBM may have taken the top spot in the most recent supercomputer rankings, but Hewlett-Packard on Monday announced that a cluster based on its ProLiant servers will be used by the U.S. Department of Defense for weapon systems design.

The DoD system is based on a 1,024-node Cluster Platform 4000 from HP that uses ProLiant DL145 servers with Opteron processors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. The cluster runs on a Linux operating system.

The system is scheduled to be installed in September at the Aeronautical Systems Center Major Shared Resource Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

The clustered system is rated at 10-teraflops performance and is expected to be used to help the Defense Department accelerate research into weapons concepts, and speed simulation programs that enhance tests and evaluations of potential new weapons systems.

In the most recent Top500 supercomputer rankings published in June, HP trailed only IBM in the number of supercomputer systems ranked among the 500 fastest in the world. IBM had 259 on the list, included the top two, while HP had 131 systems on the list.