NEC and Sun Microsystems are buddying up to attack the high-performance computing market in the US.

The two companies said they inked the deal targeting mid-range HPC customers by leveraging Sun's factory integration expertise with NEC's software prowess in areas such as computational fluid dynamics, structural mechanics and chemistry and materials science applications.

Under the agreement, NEC will do service work on behalf of Sun and its clients, while Sun promotes and sells NEC professional services. NEC will also help customers port their own applications to Sun clusters.

"This collaboration with Sun provides HPC solutions options for mid-market companies that were previously only afforded by the industry's largest companies and research centers," said Jeffrey Greenwald of NEC's HPC division.

Services provided through the agreement include:

• Linux, Solaris and other OS software services such as porting and migration, performance enhancement and optimization, benchmarking and performance assessments, and Windows Compute Cluster Servers support.
• Remote resource services such as disaster recovery consulting, resource co-location and operations management.
• System services such as integration, security and systems integrity enhancement and parallel storage file support.
• Parallel file systems services such as consulting, planning, deployment and support.

This arrangement builds on a deal forged between Sun and NEC for a massive cluster at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. ®