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FRENCH ENERGY GIANT ADDS TO SGI DEPLOYMENT

In a global effort to extract the greatest value from subsurface oil and gas reservoirs, the Exploration and Production Branch at French energy giant Total recently expanded its already extensive capabilities provided by servers and storage solutions from Silicon Graphics. The move is expected to allow Total to maximize its return on drilling investments made throughout the world by strategically approaching each discovery for optimal output.

With the June deployment of six additional SGI Altix servers, 48 more terabytes of SGI InfiniteStorage at Total's technical center in Pau, France, researchers can simultaneously conduct detailed seismic analysis on more drilling opportunities. The new resources allow the Pau facility to better help Total's 44 exploration and production subsidiaries confidently identify and develop onshore and offshore oil and gas prospects. Total uses reservoir simulation applications and seismic analysis applications to generate a digital image of the subsurface structure of the prospect or field under evaluation.

With the latest acquisition, Total geophysicists and reservoir engineers can leverage one of the world's largest commercial installations of SGI Altix systems. Each of Total's six new SGI Altix 3000 systems is powered by 64 Intel Itanium processors, each with 8GB of system memory. The new servers tap 48TB of SGI InfiniteStorage TP9500 storage via a storage area network (SAN), with the SGI InfiniteStorage Shared Filesystem CXFS and SGI InfiniteStorage Data Migration Facility (DMF) providing access to another 100TB of previously installed storage. The CXFS SAN provides instant data sharing for increased productivity among the company's existing installation of Altix servers.

"As a consequence of a policy of continuous implementation of additional Itanium processors, Total is today working on one of the most powerful computers in the world," said Jacques Delvaux, Seimic Processing Dpt deputy manager at Total. "By deliberately choosing to implement industry-standard technologies, Total has chosen a platform optimized for performance and agility. And extending our investment in SGI storage and visualization solutions gives us optimal flexibility in accessing, visualizing, and managing up to 2 petabytes of seismic data on current and future drilling prospects. With this latest acquisition, we are enhancing our own technology and economic leadership, both of which are critical in the very highly competitive petroleum research market."

"Total is using leading-edge technology to extend its competitive edge well into the future," said Tom Garrison, Intel director of enterprise solutions and marketing for EMEA. "By deploying SGI servers based on the Intel Itanium processor, Total acquires the ability to run complex simulations requiring large amounts of memory at a great price/performance."