For over 10 years, Appro has helped scientists, engineers and financial analysts utilize supercomputing resources to power their highly computational, data-intensive tasks such as scientific research discovery, data modeling, engineering simulations, and seismic visualization.

Mission:
Our mission is to provide high-value supercomputing solutions to include professional services to meet customers’ technical requirements through our commitment to product innovation, quality and customer support.

What We do
Appro applies new thinking to create simple, valuable and trusted experiences with HPC technology focus. Appro offers power-efficient and performance-optimized platforms based on Appro’s Scalable Units (SUs) and Supercomputing Cluster Architecture. The Appro SU is the building block that enables multiple clusters to be built, based on the same cluster architecture for small, medium and large-sized HPC deployments across a broad range of vertical markets. This architecture enables volume purchase of multiple clusters to be deployed as stand-alone supercomputers while providing customers flexibility and price/performance. Appro’s performance history with its Scalable Supercomputing Cluster Architecture includes large installations to both Government and Enterprise High Performance Computing customers.

The IT Computational Challenge and HPC Technology Trends
HPC has now moved well beyond its origins in large government and university research sites. Today, HPC is indispensable for large commercial firms and is quickly moving into small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across a broad range of vertical markets. While clusters have revolutionized High Performance Computing, the standardization of operating systems has also made an impact. Linux and Windows have seen worldwide growth. Gigabit Ethernet, specifically 10GE offering cabling simplicity and easy deployment will continue to show moderate growth along with the size of the HPC market, but InfiniBand providing high bandwidth and low latency capabilities will continue to show the best growth at the expense of alternative high-end proprietary interconnects. In addition, the push for performance at a lower cost has increased the demand for HPC. The amounts of raw data needed to process research analysis creates a huge demand for computing power and the use of multi-core processors helps feed this demand. The trend toward parallelism is already underway as the industry adopts multi-core technologies. GPU computing will also help accelerate this adoption with hybrid CPU/GPU cluster computing deployments. Nevertheless, HPC users will still demand better reliability, availability, manageability, compatibility and power efficiency for their supercomputing installations.

Using Technology to address today's Computational Challenges
Appro provides technology leadership by being among the first to market open platforms coupled with the latest technologies and use them as building blocks for Appro's Supercomputing Cluster Architecture offering customers a performance edge over their competition. Appro's key differentiation includes:

Balanced Architecture – Delivering a Competitive Edge
Appro products and solutions offer performance, reliability, flexibility and choice, so customers can select high-value supercomputing solutions including professional services and support that meet their technical requirements at a lower TCO. Appro delivers products leveraging open architectures that improve bandwidth, performance scalability, reliability and availability while improving performance of customers’ applications. Appro’s focus is on making sure that the managed solution delivers the processing, memory, and networking performance needed to accomplish the task quickly, reliably, and affordably. This provides a tremendous amount of value add for customers looking to accelerate their business results from an optimized infrastructure.

Standard Technologies – Open High Performance Computing
Appro delivers innovative servers and solutions designed to work with existing IT environments. Appro's products are industry standards compliant, featuring multiple high performance network connectivity solutions, multiple I/O and disc options, with the choice of AMD, Intel® processors and nVIDIA GPU Computing Technologies.

Engineering Expertise – Designing Best in Class Supercomputers
Appro has deep engineering resources that design hardware solutions based upon customer’s requirements. Appro experience and expertise enable the company to design industry leading products and management solutions that allows customers to do more with less – lowering costs and complexity while increasing return on investment.

System Management - Simplifying IT Administration
Appro’s goal is to simplify IT administration. Appro Cluster Engine™ Management Software is a carefully layered architecture composed with network, server Management, cluster and Storage Management. In addition it supports multiple networking topologies to achieve maximum reliability, performance and high availability to include diskless configuration and network failover. Appro’s Cluster Engine is based on IPMI standards simplifying any compatibility issues.

Technology Partners- Creating Industry Technology Solutions
Together, Appro and its partners create end-to-end industry-leading solutions for our customers. Our partnership model gives us the ability to be flexible and respond to your specific needs, regardless of whether you are a global enterprise or small business. Our partner relationships help us create out-of-the-box, innovative solutions for end-users who need to achieve high performance, scalability, and reliability at a very competitive cost.

Products and Services
Appro offers supercomputing solutions ranging from power efficient and performance optimized platforms to include HPC professional services and support:

Appro GreenBlade™ Series
– Ideal Building Block Solution for HPC Deployments –
The GreenBlade System is a building block package offering performance density and energy efficiency. It can hold up to 10 blade servers offering a total of 20 CPUs/80 cores in a 5U form factor.

Appro HyperGreen™ Clusters
– Ideal Solution for Medium to Large-Sized HPC Deployments –
The HyperGreen clusters are based on the GreenBlade system; a fully integrated cluster solution to include professional services and cluster management options. It provides performance scalability, density and energy efficiency at a very competitive price. It features up to 80 GreenBlade nodes, totaling 640 processing cores per 42U standard rack cabinet.

Appro Hyper Cluster Series
– Ideal Solution for Small, Medium and Large-Sized HPC Deployments
Appro HyperClusters deliver leading edge rack-mount servers based on x86 technologies offering a choice of a variety of server configurations, network, storage and cluster management options.

Appro HyperPower™ Clusters
– Ideal Solution for Small, Medium and Large-Sized HPC Deployments
The Appro HyperPower Cluster is a hybrid, fully integrated solution to include professional services and cluster management options based on the latest CPU and nVIDIA Tesla GPU computing technologies. It supports 304 CPU/18,240 GPU cores with 78TF single precision/6.56TF double precision GPU performance in a 42U standard rack configuration.

Appro Xtreme-X™ Supercomputer
– Ideal Solution for Mid to Large-Sized HPC Deployments –
The Appro Xtreme-X scales out datacenters up to a 1000TF of computing power offering a reliable, manageable and scalable architecture that unites high performance capacity computing with superior fault-tolerant capability computing.

Appro Xtreme-X™ --Cluster Engine™ Software Management
Essential to the Xtreme-X series is the Appro Cluster Engine™ Management Software. This carefully layered architecture offers a complete management solution that comes pre-installed with every system. This software suite is a total cluster management solution composed of server, network, cluster and storage management. In addition it supports multiple networking topologies to achieve maximum reliability, performance and high availability to include diskless configuration and network failover.

Worldwide Services and Support
Appro’s HPC Solutions Engineering organization brings it all together – the hardware, the software, and the applications. Appro’s HPC Support and Services Solution team includes system integration, project management, consultation services as well as global support and managed services through strategic partner alliance.

Target Markets:
- Financial Services
- Government / Defense
- Education and Research
- Manufacturing
- Oil & Gas

Select Customer List:
Magma EDA, Chevron Texaco, Lawrence Livermore National Labs, Sandia National Labs, Penn State University, Raytheon, AMD, Rice University, ANSYS, Los Alamos National Labs, Connoco, Paradigm Geophysical, Naval Research Lab, Boeing, Intel, Renault Formula 1 Team, University of Tsukuba, Gear6 Solutions.

Corporate Snapshot:
• Appro was incorporated in 1991
• Headquarters in Milpitas, CA (Silicon Valley)
• Regional Sales and Service Office in Houston, TX
• R&D and manufacturing in Korea
• Integrated and tested solutions in the Bay Area, CA
• Global Sales presence with International Channel Partners
• Sales and Services in EMEA via Strategic Alliance with NEC

Headquarters
Appro International, Inc.
446 South Abbott Avenue
Milpitas, CA 95035
Tel: (408)941-8100
Fax: (408)941-8111
www.appro.com