Silicon Graphics (SGI) recently added a new version of its SGI Altix 3700 system, the Altix 3700 Bx2, to its product line. The Bx2 scales to 256 Itanium 2 processors, including the new 1.6GHz Itanium 2 processors with 9MB cache, in a single system. Bx2 uses NUMAflex global shared-memory architecture to derive high-level application performance from high-density CPU bricks. The new configuration also doubles available bandwidth between Altix racks with SGI's NUMAlink 4 interconnect technology, offering speeds up to 6.4GB/s. Each Altix 3700 Bx2 can contain 16 to 256 processors, 8GB to 24TB of globally addressable memory and more than 1,500 PCI-X slots. It delivers over 3GB/s of sustained I/O bandwidth.

SGI, 1500 Crittenden Lane, Mountain View, California 94043, 800-800-7441, www.sgi.com.

Novell announced Novell Linux Desktop 9, a desktop operating system and office-productivity environment based on the SuSE Linux core code base and the 2.6 kernel. It can be deployed as a general-purpose desktop platform or tailored for use in information kiosks, call-center terminals or stations for infrequent PC users. Novell Linux Desktop 9 offers a Novell-customized edition of OpenOffice.org that boosts compatibility with Microsoft file formats, Novell Evolution 2, Gaim and Kopete for IM needs, Novell iFolder, the Citrix ICA client and Firefox. In support of the Linux Desktop 9 release, Novell offers administration tools such as YaST and AutoYaSTUpdate Manager, the ZENworks Linux Management bundle, enterprise-tested patches and updates, Linux training and certification and various levels of global customer support.

Novell, Inc., 404 Wyman, Suite 500, Waltham, Massachusetts 02451, 781-464-8000, www.novell.com.

The Dell PowerEdge SC1425 offers 64-bit memory addressing, DDR-2 memory and advanced I/O technologies in a 1U server. Designed to be a hot-swappable unit within a server cluster or Web farm, the SC1425 is included in Dell's high-performance computing cluster (HPCC) bundles with 8-, 16-, 32-, 64-, 128- and 256-node configurations running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 32-bit or 64-bit edition. Other features include dual Intel Xeon EM64T processors with hyper-threading 800MHz front side bus support, up to 12GB of DDR-2 memory and embedded dual GB Ethernet NICs for high-performance I/O capabilities. The node bundles are built on Linux RHEL 3 AS/WS and are offered with four different interconnects: Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet1, Myrinet and InfiniBand.

Dell, Inc., One Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas 78682, www.dell.com.

Trolltech, Inc., has released the Qtopia 2.1 development platform and user interface for Linux-based mobile devices in two editions, Qtopia Phone and Qtopia PDA. New features in Qtopia 2.1 include touch-screen phone support, full-screen handwriting input and new phone themes to extend customers' flexibility and options for developing customized Linux-based mobile devices. Qtopia 2.1 Phone Edition has extended the messaging application to include support for MMS, allowing Qtopia Phone users to create and view MMS messages with images, text and audio content. In addition, the minimum Flash requirements for Qtopia have been reduced, enabling Qtopia 2.1 to support Linux devices with limited Flash memory.

Trolltech, Inc., 1860 Embarcadero Road, Suite 100, Palo Alto, California 94303, 650-813-1676, www.trolltech.com.

The new Linux Networx scalable storage technology, Xilo, combines storage devices, management software and scalable filesystems into a single easy-to-administer storage appliance. Xilo pools capacity from separate storage devices into a large resource, allowing large files to be distributed across multiple storage devices. A Xilo system consists of one master storage device and two or more storage devices. Each storage device provides 3.75TBs of storage capacity and internal throughput of 400MB/s. Available interconnect options include dual Gigabit Ethernet (standard), Myrinet or InfiniBand. Xilo systems scale to 100s of TBs of storage and 10s of GB/s throughput. Each Xilo storage device uses triple redundant power supplies, multiple RAID controllers, hot-swappable disks and high-performance RAID for data protection. Xilo currently supports the Lustre filesystem and will support IBRIX Fusion in the future.

Linux Networx, 14944 Pony Express Road, Bluffdale, Utah 84065, 1-877-505-5694, linuxnetworx.com/xilo.