"Brick" Technology

The modular, brick-style technology called NUMAflex is designed to revolutionize the way people buy high-performance computers, allowing them to expand and upgrade only the elements they need for their systems or add new technologies as they become available. Traditionally, users have had to buy expensive "one size fits all" systems that either were too much for their needs or became obsolete quickly and had to be replaced.

With this technology, each drawer-like module in a system has a specific function and can be linked, through the patented high-speed system interconnect, to many other bricks of varying types to create a fully customized configuration. The same bricks, depending on their number or configuration, can be used for a continually expanding range of high-performance computing needs: C-brick (CPU module), P-brick (PCI expansion), D-brick (disk storage), R-brick (system/memory interconnect), I-brick (base I/O module), X-brick (XIO expansion) and G-brick (InfiniteReality graphics). New brick types will be added to the modular offering for specialized configurations (e.g., broadband data streaming) and as new technologies enter the market. The systems can also be deployed in clusters or as large shared-memory systems, depending on users' needs.

SGI, 2011 N. Shoreline Blvd., Bldg. 20L, Mountain View, CA 94043-1389. Tel: 650-960-1980; Fax: 650-933-0316.