Sandia Labs Displays Gumstix-Based Mini Super-Computer at Texas Instruments Tech Days, in Conjunction With ESC Silicon Valley 2011

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Visitors to the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) in San Jose, California this week should make sure to drop by Texas Instruments (TI) Tech Days, in the Marriott across from the McEnery Convention Center, to see Sandia National Laboratories' latest mini super-computer. About the size of a medium suitcase, this breakthrough in small computer clustering has been made possible by combining 196 x tiny Gumstix Overo™ Tide COMs ("computers-on-module") into a single, super-computing, minicluster. The system has been programmed by the MegaTux team at Sandia National Laboratories to demonstrate botnet behavior, a proto-deployment of the MegaTux project.

"We are pleased to see premier technologists like the MegaTux team take our small, Linux-based computing technology into such an exciting, clustered computing configuration," says Dr. W. Gordon Kruberg, CEO of Gumstix Inc. "Sandia's engineers are the first to cluster the Stagecoach board, which runs up to seven ARM® Cortex™ A8-based Overo COMs."

Mitch Williams, engineering technologist at Sandia National Laboratories, has leveraged the Gumstix Overo COM and Stagecoach technology "to achieve a minicluster design which yields improved node density and excellent power dissipation characteristics."

The StrongBox features hundreds of Gumstix Overo Tide COMs. Each COM is a Linux computer based on TI's OMAP3530 embedded application processor, containing an ARM Cortex- A8 CPU. The Overo COMs, mounted on trays of the Gumstix Stagecoach expansion boards, are networked by 100Mbps switched Fast Ethernet. The cluster also previews the upcoming generation of Gumstix Overo COM's built with TI's 1GHz DM37x DaVinci™ digital media processors.

This is not the first time that Sandia has used a small computing system to pre-test a planned, large deployment. Ron Minnich, distinguished member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, has previously developed "miniclusters to test new software technologies at very small scale -- just 4 to 8 nodes. Strongbox is the first minicluster that enables Sandia tests at a scale closer to the real system."

Robert Ferguson of Texas Instruments has been pleased to have Gumstix technology drive this innovation at Sandia. "Gumstix has once again demonstrated its technical leadership with our OMAP series of products. By developing their tiny Overo COMs and clustering Stagecoach expansion boards, Gumstix has been able to expand how leading minds like those at Sandia leverage embedded processing, in an exceedingly rapid development cycle, while using a much lower energy solution."

About Sandia National Laboratories

Sandia National Laboratories is a multiprogram laboratory operated and managed by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness.

About Gumstix, Inc.

Founded in 2003, Gumstix, Inc. of San Jose California develops, manufactures and markets tiny Linux® computers and related products to customers located in more than 50 countries worldwide. Design engineers integrate Gumstix technology into power management, location sensing, data collection, time and attendance, military, security, robotic applications.

About the Texas Instruments Developer Network

Gumstix, Inc. is a member of the TI Developer Network, a community of respected, well established companies offering products and services based on TI analog and digital technology. The Network provides a broad range of end-equipment solutions, embedded software, engineering services and development tools that help customers accelerate innovation to make the world smarter, healthier, safer, greener and more fun. www.ti.com/dspdevnetwork.

SOURCE Gumstix, Inc.