AUSTIN, TX -- Compagnie Generale de Geophysique ("CGG"), a leading supplier of services and products to the worldwide oil and gas industry, is upgrading its Houston processing center with 384 Dell(tm) servers running the Red Hat(R) Linux operating system. The installation is part of a CGG initiative to increase its global computing power by more than 500 percent. The cluster of dual-processor Dell PowerEdge(tm) 1550 servers combined with CGG software will help cut the processing time of seismic data and provide more accurate images of the Earth's subsurface, improving oil reservoir management for its oil company clients. Linking industry-standard servers into affordable high-performance computing clusters can provide performance levels comparable to traditional supercomputers at a fraction of the cost. "We chose this cluster because of Dell's ability to address our high performance computing needs with a powerful combination of servers and services at an attractive price," said Luc Schlumberger, executive vice president of Processing and Reservoirs at CGG-Americas. "The PowerEdge 1550 cluster running Red Hat Linux coupled with our TIKIM software provides a solution perfectly tailored to our needs, helping us in turn to respond to the needs of our clients." "Historically, high-end computing environments such as CGG's required expensive proprietary systems," said Randy Groves, vice president and general manager of Dell's Enterprise Systems Group. "Our approach leverages industry-standard PowerEdge servers with open clustering software to provide an inexpensive but powerful solution. High performance and low cost do not have to be mutually exclusive." The servers help CGG optimize its Geocluster seismic data processing software by offering clients affordable Full 3D Kirchhoff Pre-Stack Time Migration on a routine basis via CGG's proprietary TIKIM (Time Kirchhoff Migration) technology, a CPU-intensive application within Geocluster. For more information visit www.dell.com/poweredge