AMD Chips Used in Iranian HPC for Rocket Research

An Iranian research institute claims that it used AMD Opteron microprocessors to build a high-performance computing system, one more sign that the U.S. trade embargo on Iran isn't hindering that country's ability to import high-tech equipment.

The Aerospace Research Institute of Iran (ARI) posted a document on its Web site that describes a high-performance computer using dual-core chips from Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

The ARI, a government ministry, was founded in 1999 to conduct "aerospace science and technology" research, according to its Web site.

The site says that the SUSE Linux-based HPC system was launched with 32 cores and now runs 96 cores. Its performance was pegged at 192 GFLOPS.

It's unclear exactly when the Iranians started building the system.

"It is more than troubling that an Iranian aerospace entity, affiliated with the government and involved in sophisticated missile research and production, is using U.S. computer equipment for its development work," said Valerie Lincy, editor of Iran Watch, a Web site published by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.

In a statement, AMD said that it can't speculate as to how the processors could have been shipped to Iran.

"AMD has never authorized any sales or shipments of AMD products to Iran or any other embargoed country, either directly or indirectly," the company said.

Mehdi Noorbaksh, an associate professor of international affairs at the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania, said that Iran buys its technology mostly on the black market.

"That market provides Iran with what the authorities need for these projects," Noorbaksh said.

High technology from U.S. companies appears to be widely available in Iran. Various Iranian firms advertise servers, networking products and components from a variety of U.S. vendors on their Web sites.

The ARI disclosure comes two years after the Iranian High Performance Computing Research Center said that it had assembled a Linux-based supercomputer using 216 Opteron processing cores.

This version of the story originally appeared in Computerworld 's print edition.

HP revenue drops in tough climate

Computer industry bellwether Hewlett-Packard reported a 3 percent drop in revenue as its major lines of business continued to be hammered by the global recession.

The company also became the latest technology vendor to resort to layoffs in order to cut costs. Over the next 12 months, HP will lay off about 2 percent of its work force, or about 6,000 employees, HP Chief Financial Officer Cathie Lesjak said during a conference call with financial analysts Tuesday. HP employs 321,000 worldwide.

The company remained profitable, however, posting results that were in line with analyst expectations. HP recorded a profit of US$1.7 billion on sales of $27.4 billion. Earnings per share were $0.70 for its second fiscal quarter, ended April 30.

In a hopeful sign, the company reaffirmed its earlier guidance for fiscal 2009, saying it expected to earn between $3.76 and $3.88 per share for the year. That's better than analysts had been expecting. In a Thomson Financial survey of 26 financial analysts, the consensus estimate was $3.71 for the year. However, the company was pessimistic on revenue for the year, saying it would be down by 4 percent to 5 percent. Last quarter, HP had said it expected revenue to be down between 2 percent and 5 percent.

HP Chairman and CEO Mark Hurd said it was unlikely that corporate IT purchasing patterns would change in fiscal 2009. "We have customers that tell me, 'We're just delaying as long as we can until we have to buy,'" he said during a conference call with financial analysts Tuesday. "CIOs have been given marching orders that say, 'Take that infrastructure, keep the infrastructure running... be very particular about new projects you start, and if you can avoid starting that project, avoid starting it.'"

The quarter's revenue drop would have been much worse had HP not seen its services sales nearly double, year-over-year, thanks to the company's Aug. 26 acquisition of Electronic Data Services (EDS). Services revenue was up 99 percent, totaling $8.5 billion for the quarter.

HP is in the process of cutting 24,600 EDS jobs as it absorbs the computer services giant. The company's EDS integration is ahead of schedule, Hurd said, with "roughly half" of those positions now eliminated.

Everywhere else, however, the financial numbers reflected the global slowdown: storage revenue was down 22 percent; midrange server revenue dropped 21 percent; and sales of the company's industry standard servers and business critical systems were both down 29 percent.

Sales of desktop PCs dropped 24 percent, notebooks were down 13 percent and revenue in the company's printer division was down 23 percent.

The company did see improvements in some areas. "We saw improvement in China, and it was material. We saw improvement in U.S. consumer that I wouldn't say was as material," Hurd said. "I just think we're going to need another quarter of data in order to make a meaningful statement about any upturn or anything like that."

HP posted disappointing earnings last quarter as well, as revenue dropped in all of its business units. Hurd responded by imposing wage cuts across the board at HP. He cut his own salary by 20 percent and those of HP's top executives by 15 percent. The company's remaining executives saw a 10 percent wage cut while all other salaries were slashed by 5 percent.

HP had been hoping that these wage cuts would help it avoid layoffs. In a Feb. 18 memo to employees, Hurd said, "I don't believe a major workforce reduction is the best thing for HP at this time."