An SGI(R) Altix(R) 4700 from SGI (NASDAQ:SGIC) is enabling
sophisticated traffic simulation at the recently unveiled Universal
Transportation Model Simulation Center (UTMSC) at City College of New
York (CCNY). The center is using the high performance computing solution
to run traffic simulators and models for traffic planning, signal
optimization and network flow. These models can be used to meet
escalating traffic demands or to establish an effective transportation
plan in the event of a disaster.
The SGI Altix 4700, powered by 40 Intel(R) Itanium2(R) processors,
was installed in February, 2007.
Running VISTA(TM) traffic simulation software on the powerful SGI
platform, researchers, public agencies and private consulting firms can
generate large scale models for a number of different scenarios. These
include transportation planning models to evaluate the impact of various
infrastructure changes and assessing traffic control measures such as
signal timing, speed limit changes, and High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV)
lanes. Also included are evacuation and emergency response models to be
used in the event of a natural disaster or other catastrophe.
"Traffic simulation is a very data intensive
application," said Dr. Neville Parker, director of UTMSC, CUNY
Institute for Transportation Systems. "The 40 core SGI Altix 4700
platform provides the low latency, scalability and expansive shared
memory we need to allow multiple users to run our large-scale
transportation models simultaneously."
"We've already seen significant speed in
performance," continued Dr. Parker. "The SGI Altix 4700
simulates traffic at over 8x real time for medium sized regional
networks and can perform forty such simulations in parallel."
"The models and simulations that UTMSC is making possible will
have a far ranging impact on commuters in the New York Metropolitan
area," said Doug Britt, senior vice president of Worldwide Sales at
SGI. "The list of uses for these models is staggering. Using
simulation software on the Altix 4700, UTMSC can evaluate potential
results of special events such as the Super Bowl or changes in travel
demand on a particular route, such as the opening of a new shopping
center. They can even provide scenarios for large scale emergency
evacuation."
About The City College of New York
For more than 160 years, The City College of New York has provided
low-cost, high-quality education for New Yorkers in a wide variety of
disciplines. Over 14,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate
degrees in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; The School of
Architecture, Urban Design and Landscape Architecture (SAUDLA); The
School of Education; The Grove School of Engineering, and The Sophie
Davis School of Biomedical Education.
For more information, visit http://www.ccny.cuny.edu.
About SGI Altix 4700
SGI(R) Altix 4700 features a shared-memory architecture that
simplifies software development, workload management and system
administration. It supports up to 512 sockets or 1024 cores under one
instance of Linux and as much as 128TB of globally addressable memory.
In addition, the 4700 is designed to deliver industry-leading bandwidth
and latency for superior performance in shared or distributed memory
applications.
For more information, visit http://www.sgi.com or call
256/773-2371.
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