SiCortex

About SiCortex

SiCortex, a firm established in 2003, focused on manufacturing supercomputers with an emphasis on energy efficiency. The founding team included CEO John F. Mucci, a veteran in the high-performance computing industry, alongside technologists Judson Leonard and Dr. Matthew Reilly, with Dr. William D. Strecker as the founding chairman. Leonard brought extensive experience in digital VLSI design, while Reilly had a long history in microprocessor architecture. This collective expertise was central to the company's objective of creating compact, cost-effective, and scalable cluster systems for demanding technical applications.

The company's business was centered on the design, production, and sale of high-performance computing (HPC) clusters. Its target market included industrial, commercial, and scientific organizations requiring substantial computational power for complex problem-solving. SiCortex's product line was designed to be more power-efficient than traditional supercomputers, a key selling point for data centers concerned with energy consumption and cooling costs. Revenue was generated through the direct sale of these systems, which ranged in price from approximately $20,000 to $2 million.

SiCortex's core technology was a proprietary system-on-a-chip (SoC), which integrated six 64-bit MIPS processor cores, memory controllers, and a high-performance cluster interconnect onto a single chip. This design was the foundation for its product family, which included models like the deskside SC072 for software development, the mid-range SC648, and the high-end SC5832, which contained up to 5,832 cores. A distinguishing feature of their systems was the significant reduction in power consumption compared to conventional clusters. For instance, a complete SiCortex node consumed about 15 watts, a fraction of the power used by a standard cluster node. The systems ran a customized version of Gentoo Linux. Despite securing customers like Purdue University and Argonne National Laboratory and demonstrating its low-power capabilities in unique ways, the company was not profitable. In May 2009, after failing to secure new venture capital, SiCortex ceased operations and began the process of selling its assets and intellectual property.