Company Success Stories - Veritas
Veritas Uses Cluster Supercomputers To Provide Its Customers With a Better Product At Less Cost
Profile
Veritas
1st June 2002
"Since our evaluations two years ago, the AMD Athlon processor has been our system CPU of choice,"
Across the globe, a multitude of companies explore for oil and gas around the clock, by land and by sea. But throughout the industry, the rules are changing, and once again it is the development of new technology that's driving better exploration methods.
Consider Veritas DGC, Inc, based in Houston, as a prime example. On any given day, Veritas, a publicly traded company with 36 years' experience in the industry, will be keeping most of its 18 land zone crews busy around the world while marine vessels from its seven ship fleet troll the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea or the waters of the Asia Pacific, mapping the Earth’s subsurface.
Veritas vessels can tow eight geophysical streamers up to 8 km in length. Embedded in these cables are devices called hydrophones that gather and record seismic data, which is transmitted to one of Veritas' seismic data processing centers.
"People outside the industry may be surprised to find how much data is produced by seismic exploration methods," said Colin Murdoch, Senior Vice President of Technology at Veritas. "We typically end up with many terabytes (trillion bytes) of data from a single survey."
To effectively analyze the vast amounts of seismic data the company was generating, Veritas in 1990 purchased its first supercomputers.
By 1999, Veritas began exploring new cluster-based algorithm developments, along with cluster hardware and system configurations.
"Our main requirement was to provide a configuration that could significantly reduce the costs of our very compute-intensive prestack imaging applications," said Murdoch.
That exploration led Veritas to RackSaver, a California-based manufacturer with a reputation for building custom high-density rack mount servers and supercomputer solutions. RackSaver had achieved considerable success building cluster configurations using
AMD Athlon™ processors, noted for their powerful floating-point performance.
The real test would come when the AMD-powered RackSaver systems were evaluated using Veritas' own proprietary code. The results were clear.
"We found we could leverage better price/performance using RackSaver’s AMD Athlon processor-based systems," said Murdoch. "Since our evaluations two years ago, the AMD Athlon processor has been our system CPU of choice. Quite simply, the AMD Athlon processor has helped us break through price/performance thresholds in our industry."
Veritas is currently utilizing the latest RackSaver high density Linux Clusters in its Houston, Singapore, Calgary and London data processing centers.
"RackSaver has helped us create some of the most powerful computer systems in the industry today," said Murdoch. "To give you some idea, we now have 4,500 microprocessors in cluster installations at our Houston data center. That's an incredible amount of computing power under one roof."
Management at Veritas, which counts the world's three largest oil exploration companies among its clients, understands the needs of these companies to contract for integrated services that employ the latest technologies. The focus for Veritas is to work as a partner with clients to provide exploration solutions. To further that process, Veritas has developed four state-of-the-art data visualization centers. These facilities signal a new era in the way exploration data are fundamentally viewed and interpreted.
"To be the best, we have to utilize the absolute best price/performance hardware and software available to us," said Murdoch. "Our industry was founded on technology, and its growth is determined in large part by the pace of technology advancements. The only way for us to survive and prosper is to achieve constant productivity and quality improvements. And the way we do this is by utilizing higher performing systems combined with continuous investments in R&D."
One innovation that is projected to be available in 2003 is AMD's 8th generation microprocessor for enterprise servers and workstations. The AMD Opteron™ processor is designed to preserve companies’ investments in 32-bit applications while allowing a seamless transition to 64-bit computing, as companies require.
"We are very interested in the release of AMD's eighth generation technology," Murdoch said.
The use of cluster supercomputing in the oil and gas industry is no secret. Their use is becoming the rule rather than the exception. Yet Veritas, with the support of companies such as AMD and RackSaver remains focused on developing and maintaining a technological edge. It follows that the company doggedly pursues the best available computer technology in its relentless journey to explore new frontiers.
© 2002 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved.
AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Athlon, and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other product names used are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies.
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Quote provided June 2002 by Colin Murdoch, Senior Vice President of Technology at Veritas
1. "People outside the industry may be surprised to find how much data is produced by seismic exploration methods. We typically end up with many terabytes (trillion bytes) of data from a single survey."
2. "Our main requirement was to provide a configuration that could significantly reduce the costs of our very compute-intensive prestack imaging applications."
3. "We found we could leverage better price/performance using RackSaver’s AMD Athlon™ processor-based systems. Since our evaluations two years ago, the AMD Athlon processor has been our system CPU of choice. Quite simply, the AMD Athlon processor has helped us break through price/performance thresholds in our industry."
4. "RackSaver has helped us create some of the most powerful computer systems in the industry today. To give you some idea, we now have 4,500 microprocessors in cluster installations at our Houston data center. That's an incredible amount of computing power under one roof."
5. "To be the best, we have to utilize the absolute best price/performance hardware and software available to us. Our industry was founded on technology, and its growth is determined in large part by the pace of technology advancements. The only way for us to survive and prosper is to achieve constant productivity and quality improvements. And the way we do this is by utilizing higher performing systems combined with continuous investments in R&D."
6. "We are very interested in the release of AMD's eighth generation technology."
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