Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, July 25, 2011 - A group of Saudi Arabia's largest companies has joined to form the Kingdom's first High Performance Computing (HPC) user group to accelerate critical research and scientific discovery here. 

Organized by HP, a global leader in high performance computing, the group will share best practices and the latest HPC technology   among a modern generation of scientists in Saudi Arabia to advance research and innovation in the region.  

HP technology has brought high performance computing with advanced compute power and energy efficiency to a dramatically wider customer base in the Kingdom over the past decade, from small labs to educational institutions and leading enterprise deployments.

With the rise of scalable x86 servers, multicore technologies as well as more affordable and faster processing speeds of GPUs (graphic processing units,) there is growing momentum in HPC. The new group has the goal to drive fundamental changes to make supercomputing technology more accessible and affordable to more users in more applications areas in a broad range of industries in the Kingdom, including financial, scientific research as well as oil and gas. 

The HPC user group includes Saudi Aramco, King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Bin Laden Group, King Abdulaziz University and Umm Al Qura University. The group met in Jeddah for its first conference providing users with networking opportunities and a platform to discuss issues, new HPC ,  solutions and the resulting benefits.

"Saudi organizations are looking to maximize resources across their technology infrastructures by increasing compute power without increasing energy use or footprint," said Hossam Darra, Country Manager for Industry Standard Servers and Software, HP Saudi Arabia. "As a leading global technology vendor, HP is proud to lead the first HPC user group in Saudi Arabia to help these customers achieve discovery, solve problems or secure research results faster and at a lower cost." 

Dr. Khalid Juhany, Chairman of the Aeronautical Engineering department of King Abdul Aziz University said, "In 2006, we established an HPC facility, the first of its kind at a Saudi university. The HPC facility was created as part of our Advanced fluid Dynamics Labs to support both academic research and local industry needs. The HPC Usergroup is a unique opportunity to share knowledge and expertise with new partners in academia and industry.

To learn more about the HP HPC Usergroup, please refer to the Facebook group:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_210045059021280&ap=1

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