©2009-2010 dani flexer [email protected] purefast strategic collaboration proposal to paso uk...

©2009-2010 Dani Flexer [email protected]

PureFast Strategic Collaboration

Proposal to PASO UK Dani Flexer [email protected]


Wishful thinking...• Joint press release – a year from now:• Avend and PureFast dominate energy computing

market• In an astonishing comeback, Avend Systems, leveraging

PureFast floating point accelerators, has become the dominant vendor in the energy market, with a 50% market share and a total revenue in excess of $XB.

• The collaboration with PureFast has helped Avend present the most cost effective, scalable, and low-powered solution to this extremely demanding market, supporting its high-floating point processing applications.

• The collaboration has catapulted Avend from its previous position as an also-ran to its current leadership position.


Agenda

• PureFast products and market • Internal stakeholders• Avend/PureFast joint value proposition• What's in it for them?• What's in it for us?• Issues and risks• Rout to market• Action plan


PureFast products

• Core technology is the DTZ700 co-processor

• Forward™ accelerator PCI-X 2.0 board with two DTZ700chips


PureFast products• Core technology is the DTZ700co-processor

> Embedded low-power parallel processor with 96 cores > 25 billion 64-bit floating point operations per second

(GFLOPS)> Compared to XX for AMD Opteron based Milkyway> Compared to YY for Horseshoe1 based VX000

> World's fastest and most power efficient 64-bit FPU

• Forward™ accelerator PCI-X 2.0 board with two DTZ700chips> Hardware compatible with Avend PCI-X systems - > Currently does not support Solaris> PureFast sell and support a C cross development

environment


PureFast market

• Best suited for HPTC applications requiring additional compute performance beyond the capabilities of standard FPUs

• Applicable markets are primarily in manufacturing, education, defense and public sector


PureFast market• Best suited for HPTC applications requiring

additional compute performance beyond the capabilities of standard FPUs> Neither Opteron nor SPARC are designed to address

these requirements

• Applicable markets are primarily in manufacturing, education, defense and public sector> Meteorological> MCAE (e.g., solid modeling)> Life-science (e.g., molecular chemistry computations)> Oil & gas (e.g., seismic analysis)> Defense (e.g., cryptological processing)


Internal Avend stakeholders• Verticals• Services• Storage• Systems• Sales


Internal Avend stakeholders• Verticals

> Education and government > Energy> Manufacturing

• Services> Complex mission critical applications likely to carry

significant services requirements – architecture, support and deployment

• Storage> Data intensive HPTC requires significant storage

• Systems> Significantly increases Avend system's addressable market

in HPTC

• Sales> Leading with HPTC solutions creates additional sales

opportunities> Increased appeal to education, manufacturing, government

and defense markets provides access to new customers


Avend/PureFast joint value proposition• Avend systems with PureFast co-

processors an ideal choice for HPTC> HPTC market needs both high data

throughput and FP performance> Due to flexibility, integer performance

and low power requirements, arguably the best solution on the market


Avend/PureFast joint value proposition• Avend's systems suitable for high throughput integer

processing• PureFast targets high-end floating point applications

> Co-processor that can be part of a general purpose computing platform with a high FP computing ability

• Horseshoe & AMD based systems with PureFast co-processors an ideal choice for HPTC> Due to flexibility, integer performance and low power

requirements, arguably the best solution on the market

• It is possible to share a single DTZ700 board between several CPU cores> Flexible so can be deployed to address specific processing

loads


Avend/PureFast joint value proposition • PureFast currently supports AMD & Intel systems

> Avend's X64 systems running Linux or MS/Windows supported by current PureFast offering

• Competitive advantage in FP processing by the PureFast co-processor together with high integer throughput derived from Avend's CMT or X64 based system defines the core target market as one which requires:> High network and/or data processing> High FP processing> Best cost/performance at lowest power consumption

• Oil & Gas, MCAE, weather, aerospace, imaging> Large data-set and large FP transformations

• FP processing at minimal infrastructure and power cost


What's in it for them?

• Avend> Provides route to market > Excellent system platform> Partners> Does not compete


What's in it for them?• Avend's presence in the HPTC market is still significant

despite recent dis-investments> Avend can offer solutions incorporating PureFast technology to this

market and grow market share for both companies

• Avend's superior integer and networking capabilities enable enhancements to PureFast enabled HPTC applications

• Avend matches PureFast low-power advantage• Avend's worldwide presence enables PureFast to reach

new geographical markets at low incremental cost of sales

• Avend/PureFast collaboration potentially long term since Avend does not have plans to compete directly with PureFast

• Avend can broker three way collaboration with service providers and ISVs> Avend's massive ISV community can be leveraged to increase

PureFast's addressable market


What's in it for us?

• Significantly increases addressable market in HPTC

• Significant additional products and services pull

• Research market in HPTC highly visible

• Strong enabler for utility computing


What's in it for us?• Significantly increases addressable market in HPTC

> By $TBD (large) world-wide> Enables market leading FP/integer performance

• Significant additional products and services pull> If we are able to support the core HPTC solution, our

competitive position in selling data processing, storage and networking systems improves

> Access to new customers that can then be offerred “traditional” Avend products

• Research market in HPTC highly visible> “Halo” effect

• Strong enabler for utility computing> HPTC applications well suited to cloud in terms of data-

flow but require high FP capability


Route To Market• Solutions• Platform• Utility


Route To Market• Solutions: PureFast enables the sale of a range of HPTC

solutions based on 3rd party codebases> Solutions should be jointly developed, marketed and sold in

collaboration with the applicable HPTC ISVs – e.g., CD-Adapco, Paradigm Geophysical, Schlumberger/Geoquest, Dassault, NAG, FIT, various research codebases (e.g., University of Gernoble DIRCC) etc.

• Platform: PureFast enables the sale of Avend systems as viable HPTC platforms to HPTC service providers, researchers and other non-ISV developers> As such should be marketed as a configurable system platform

components together with storage and networking> Focus should be on the high end of the HPTC market - research

institutes and service providers - e.g., Universtiy of Grenoble, CGG

• Utility: PureFast can provide FP processing power to the Avend utility computing offering


Action Plan

• Technical• Marketing• Sales


Action Plan• Technical

> Develop Solaris support> Proof of concept through pilot port of a typical/leading HPTC

codebase> Performance improvement – benchmark & tuning

• Marketing> Joint GTM – SuperComp, industry specific shows, etc.> OEM agreement – Avend to OEM PureFast> Evangelize Avend/PureFast platforms to HPTC developers> Present Avend HPTC platform to market w/out mention of

PureFast> Brand Avend as an HPTC “contender”

• Sales> Train sales people and SEs on Avend/PureFast platforms and

solutions> Collaborate with ISVs in the sale of Avend/PureFast based

solutions


Issues & Risks

• Currently supports Linux and Windows only

• Avend's PCI-X not necessarily compatible with all PureFast boards

• PureFast execution model atypical• Due to calling overhead, PureFast will

improve performance only where the transformations are relatively large

• Target codebases and platform need to be selected carefully


Issues & Risks• Currently supports Linux and Windows only

> Solaris port will increase PureFast value to Avend

• Avend's PCI-X not compatible with all PCI-X boards> Additional tests and qualification required> Avend systems do not have a common implementation

• PureFast execution model atypical> May require customization of Avend Performance Library for

Solaris

• Due to calling overhead, PureFast will improve performance only where the transformations are relatively large> Break-even point at transformations on the order of TBD

transformations/call

• Target codebases and platform need to be selected carefully > Avend systems will have varying competitive advantage as the

FP processing requirements change


Strategy

• If Avend is serious about HPTC, a co-processor strategy is needed

• Options are - develop, buy or partner

• The call needs to be made if we are serious about this market


Strategy• If Avend is serious about HPTC a co-processor

strategy is needed> Increased FP performance of Horseshoe 2 will not

suffice and not run optimally

• Options are - develop, buy or partner> Develop: costly and not within our core competency> Buy: purchase of PureFast or competitor could be to our

advantage> Partner: lowest risk/reward strategy since does not give

long term competitive advantage however our current position is strong

• The call needs to be made if we are serious about this market


Thanks!

[email protected]


SWOT• Strength

> Avend a technical product company – has the engineering, technical marketing and partnering skills to incorporate PureFast into its products

• Weakness> Avend may have lost most of its HPTC skills through recurring

RIFs> Use of Linux/Windows based solutions may cause internal

“political” resistance

• Opportunity> Vastly improves Avend's value prop to the HPTC market and to

HPTC ISVs> Significant incremental addressable market> Lead with HPTC and sell additional products

• Threat> Other vendors can mimic our collaboration with PureFast for X64


Q&[email protected]

©2009-2010 dani flexer [email protected] purefast strategic collaboration proposal to paso uk...

Documents

avend pcix systems

hptc applications

energy market

market share

demanding market

floating point operations

defense markets

hptchptc market needs