News Release
17 April, 2007

Ten-fold expansion of computing power puts Oxford into Supercomputer premier league
~ Pillar Axiom selected to provide dedicated storage system for Oxford University Supercomputer ~

The Oxford e-Research Centre (OeRC) is set to enter the global Supercomputer premier league with the creation of an enhanced supercomputing centre at Oxford University. This will be housed in a brand new facility designed to handle the most complex computer modelling projects, including advanced climate simulation and prediction and the latest medical research.

The Oxford Supercomputer systems will carry out 15 trillion calculations per second, with some applications able to generate the equivalent of nearly 600 copies of the Oxford English Dictionary on CD in a single hour. The Pillar Axiom (TM) storage system, a network attached storage (NAS) system, handles all this information as the Supercomputer works through the most complex of mathematical models.

"In order to handle the ten fold increase in computing power and all the associated increase in data, the storage system has to be flexible and efficient," said Dr Jon Lockley, centre manager at the Oxford Supercomputing Centre. "One day our systems could be trying to crack the make-up of complex proteins, the next it could be predicting climate change in 50 or 100 years. Therefore, the ability to expand and reconfigure the storage easily is vital. The type of data, volume and speed at which the storage system needs to handle the results, varies dramatically from project to project."

"The Pillar Axiom provides the team at Oxford with 'what if?' predictability modelling within the array," said Paul Sleep, sales director at NexStor. "This ensures the team is able to maintain performance should additional tasks be added; bringing more capacity, more storage horsepower, online. The Axiom proved its flexibility, showing how easily it could adapt as storage demands changed, as well as its green credentials of energy efficiency and reduced space requirements."

"Oxford University has always been at the cutting edge of research, and the Pillar Axiom system will sit at the core of its Supercomputer network," said Chris Jones, VP Europe, Pillar Data Systems. "In conjunction with key partner NexStor, we have been working closely with the Oxford e-Research Centre since early 2006. The team at the Supercomputing Centre was able to install an Axiom and run it in its actual environment before committing to any purchase."

As computing power increases scientists and engineers are able to solve more of today's medical, environmental and scientific problems. Oxford's system will boost the UK's computing power and provide an invaluable research resource to the country's scientific community.

For more information about Pillar Data Systems visit: www.pillardata.co.uk

Notes to Editors

About Oxford e-Research Centre
The Oxford e-Research Centre (OeRC) works with research units across the whole of Oxford University to enable the use and development of innovative computational and information technology in multidisciplinary collaborations.

With a core staff of researchers, developers and support staff the OeRC operates as a hub for e-Research activities across the University, building a community around e-Research at Oxford. The Centre is strongly linked to the UK's national e-Science programme, while national and international collaborations will ensure that activities at Oxford are aligned with e-infrastructure developments nationwide and abroad.

About Pillar Data Systems
Founded in 2001, Pillar Data Systems develops enterprise network storage systems. The company's Pillar Axiom solution, driven by its innovative policy-based management capabilities, integrates SAN and NAS into a centrally managed storage platform. Pillar Axiom systems consolidate multiple tiers of enterprise network storage into a single, easily managed system capable of scaling to hundreds of terabytes of capacity.

Pillar Data Systems is privately funded by Tako Ventures, LLC, the venture arm of Larry Ellison. The company is headquartered in San Jose.. The EMEA headquarters is in Ireland, with initial operations across Ireland, UK, Germany and France.