Paradigm Adopts SGI Technology for High-Performance Computing and Global Services Business

(I-Newswire) May 9, 2005 - Paradigm™, a leading provider of advanced petroleum geoscience and engineering software to the oil and gas exploration and production industry worldwide, has purchased five SGI® Altix® systems from Silicon Graphics (NYSE: SGI) for its global services organization. Four of the systems, which will be used to process seismic data for Paradigm's energy customers, will be fully installed by May in four major operating regions - the United States, Malaysia, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS/Central Asia) and the United Kingdom - with a fifth system to be delivered in mid-May. This transaction follows years of productive cooperation between Paradigm and SGI, resulting in optimized performance for a wide range of software solutions.

Using the high-performance SGI Altix systems, Paradigm's seismic data processing customers will achieve faster, more accurate and cost-effective results, which will enable energy companies to open up new exploration areas, increase the success rate of exploration wells, and identify previously unseen pockets of oil within existing fields.

"Through the selection of SGI's shared-memory 64-bit architecture, we are adding significant capacity to our global computing resources", said Chris Usher, Corporate Vice-President, Services at Paradigm. "Our services centers will gain a substantial boost in capacity, coupled with a lower cost of ownership and smaller footprint, particularly in smaller regional centers. At the same time, our services teams will be able to leverage the shared-memory performance advantages of the Altix systems for our wide range of time and depth imaging applications."

With 21 service centers around the world, Paradigm's Integrated Services Division offers powerful processing capacity, combined with Paradigm's own leading-edge software and years of global experience.

Duane Dopkin, Senior Vice-President of Paradigm's Technology Division, stated, "The SGI Altix allows us to access large amounts of memory to exploit the high-performance computing requirements of our depth imaging technology. We are pleased to have the Altix in our compute portfolio for use with current and future imaging applications."

"Paradigm's adoption of the SGI Altix solution is a significant endorsement of the platform's suitability and cost effectiveness for subsurface image processing," Bill Bartling, Senior Director, Market Strategy, SGI, added. "This combination of technology - the SGI Altix hardware and Paradigm software - will be the catalyst for processing new kinds of data that will open additional, unseen opportunities to the oil industry for new discoveries and extensions of their reserve base."

The SGI® Altix® 3000 platform combines the speed of SGI's shared-memory NUMAflex™ architecture with the power of Intel® Itanuim® 2 processors to create an open-source Linux environment. The SGI Altix family is designed to help SGI customers in the oil and gas market overcome their toughest problems and achieve breakthrough results with the 64-bit architecture. Paradigm purchased four SGI Altix 3000 systems, each with 32 Intel Itanium 2 processors and 64 GB memory.

About Paradigm
Paradigm provides information solutions to the leaders of the oil and gas industry worldwide. The company has a global network of sales, services and user support, with 25 offices in 22 countries, serving all major oil and gas producing provinces in the world. Paradigm's advanced set of Software Solutions and Integrated Services for prospect generation and evaluation supports every stage in the oil and gas E&P process, from Data Processing and Imaging; through advanced Visualization, Interpretation and Earth Modeling; to Reservoir Characterization and Petrophysics; up to Petroleum Engineering, Well Planning and Drilling. These solutions are supported by the Epos Data Management and Interoperability integration framework. More information can be found on the Web at www.paradigmgeo.com.

SILICON GRAPHICS | The Source of Innovation and Discovery™
SGI, also known as Silicon Graphics, Inc. (NYSE: SGI), is a leader in high-performance computing, visualization and storage. SGI's vision is to provide technology that enables the most significant scientific and creative breakthroughs of the 21st century. Whether it's sharing images to aid in brain surgery, finding oil more efficiently, studying global climate, providing technologies for homeland security and defense or enabling the transition from analog to digital broadcasting, SGI is dedicated to addressing the next class of challenges for scientific, engineering and creative users. With offices worldwide, the company is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., and can be found on the Web at www.sgi.com.

Silicon Graphics, SGI, Altix, the SGI cube and the SGI logo are registered trademarks, and NUMAflex and The Source of Innovation and Discovery are trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries worldwide. Intel and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. Paradigm, the Paradigm logo, Epos, VoxelGeo and/or other Paradigm products referenced herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of Paradigm Geotechnology B.V. and its affiliates. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

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