NVIDIA says that Hess Corp. is using HP Z800 workstations outfitted with NVIDIA® Quadro® graphics processing units (GPUs) and NVIDIA SLI® Multi-OS technology to investigate reducing IT costs while increasing productivity for geosciences professionals.

Leveraging virtualization technologies from NVIDIA, Parallels and others, the HP Z800 workstation delivers the speed and expandability that oil and gas professionals can fully utilize to tackle their biggest challenges.

"In our constantly challenging and highly competitive business environment, cost-effective, flexible, powerful IT solutions are critically important," said Jeff Davis, manager, Technical Computing, at Hess. "We're examining how the HP Z800 workstation, bolstered by the technologies incorporated in it from NVIDIA, can help us with our ongoing exploration efforts."

NVIDIA SLI Multi-OS enables Hess to run both Microsoft Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux simultaneously on a single workstation.

Using Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (Intel VT-d) hardware acceleration, SLI Multi-OS allows Hess to directly assign NVIDIA Quadro graphics processing units (GPUs) to virtual machines- a breakthrough capability for graphics-intensive applications.

Parallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme is the first high-end workstation virtualization solution to offer users near-native performance for graphics-intensive applications. The product leverages the key virtualization technologies enabled by NVIDIA and Intel to deliver highly performing virtual machines for the most demanding visualization applications.

"Instead of running applications on different machines, and moving data back and forth over the network, SLI Multi-OS radically streamlines users' workflows and instantly enhances productivity," said Jeff Brown, general manager, NVIDIA Professional Solutions Group. "We believe Hess' use of fully virtualized workstations will makes their employees more efficient, while lowering the total cost of ownership."

Tags: NVIDIA Corporation