Landmark Graphics Enables Energy Sector To Predict Future Oil Requirements By Using Intel® Itanium® 2 Processors

Software Specialist Optimizes Exploration Application Using Intel Energy Competence Center

SWINDON, England, March 16, 2004 - Intel Corporation announced today that Landmark Graphics Corporation, a leading provider of software and services for the oil and gas industry, has optimized its oil exploration application for the Intel® Itanium® 2 processor.

The high-performance optimization of VIP*, which is Landmark's reservoir simulation suite used by approximately 30 percent of the world's energy companies, will enable organizations to better simulate vast oil reservoirs and more accurately predict future reserves as well as the time and scale of oil production. Landmark's VIP application was optimized utilizing Itanium 2 processor-based servers at the Intel Energy Competence Center in Abu Dhabi.

"When undertaking oil reservoir simulation, you're virtually predicting the future and have to account for a huge range of variables," said Dr. John Killough, senior research fellow of research and development at Landmark. "As a result, the energy industry is increasingly turning to the high performance and vast memory capacity that Itanium 2 processors deliver to handle the massive data volumes critical to such projects. VIP's optimization to the Itanium 2 architecture means that work which previously took weeks to complete can now be finished in hours, significantly increasing time-to-market and translating into real cost savings for energy companies using the software."

Landmark's VIP software was optimized at Intel's Energy Competence Center using a cluster of Itanium 2 processor-based servers, enabled with a Myrinet switch that scaled between six and 38 nodes, to ensure it had the capacity to run the most complicated tasks. This high-performance platform allows Landmark software to run vast reservoir replicas of virtually unlimited size and has significantly reduced the timescales for individual full-scale reservoir modelling tests.

"Intel and IBM established the Intel Energy Competency Center in Abu Dhabi to provide a high-tech facility where companies can optimize IT solutions for the energy sector," said Ramzi Abdul Baki, Intel's business development manager for the energy sector in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa.

"Intel has a particularly strong track record of working with companies that deliver IT solutions to the energy industry," said Tom Garrison, director of enterprise marketing, Intel Europe Middle East and Africa. "Our work with Landmark further builds on this tradition by utilizing the industry-leading resources at Intel's Energy Competency Center. Ultimately, the high performance enabled by Landmark's software optimization for Itanium 2-based processors will enable the energy sector to locate and extract oil faster and more effectively."

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