Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[woggut]

You have to remember that part of the mission of the government labs is develop new technologies. The labs are the leading edge in supercomputing, obviously they saw some potential in the Opteron that wasn't available on other platforms. Remember, at one point the transistor was proprietary technology.

http://www.sandia.gov/mission/ste/index.html
Realizing that the best science, technology, and engineering cannot be developed alone, Sandia collaborates and partners with a variety of like-minded industry, government, and academic institutions to build capabilities and accomplish our missions.</i?

Not all supercomputers are the same. The basic problem they're trying to solve is the interconnect, something the high bandwidth, low latency hypertransport bus is ideally suited for.

http://www.hoise.com/primeur/02/articles/monthly/CL-PR-02-02-1.html
He concluded by saying: "There are two principal types of supercomputers, adapted to different niches. These niches are important. Picking the wrong type of supercomputer wastes money because you are paying for unused transistors or connections. Reducing Overhead saves time in Type T systems. Reducing Latency is the preserve of Type C systems. The cost in Type C systems is in wires (connections) not in processors."

note: type C is clustered, type T is tightly coupled.