Bull and ffA (Foster Findlay Associates Ltd) have entered into a partnership agreement to deliver ffA GPU-enabled 3-D seismic analysis software to the oil and gas community on bull high performance computing systems.

Seismic interpreters are facing a growing amount of data to interpret and the demands for computational tools to underpin the 3-D seismic interpretation process throughout the E&P workflow have never been more apparent. Through use of ffA's high performance computational software, a data driven approach to 3-D seismic interpretation can provide the step change in productivity required for geoscientists to fully exploit their data and deliver more accurate interpretations of the subsurface, improved understanding of uncertainty, and better quantification of risk.

"We are excited to be working with Bull, who bring a strong innovative approach to their systems design, which incorporates computational power and scalability with advanced interactive visualization features. Our development program is directly addressing the challenges of extracting meaningful information from seismic data at increasing volumes and levels of complexity. These challenges can be significantly advanced by using automated HPC techniques in real or near real time," noted Jonathan.

The two companies will work together to promote the use within the E&P industry of interactive methods for 3-D seismic analysis using HPC technology, in particular the use of GPU accelerators. These are fitted into Bull server nodes, from the entry-level tower chassis systems with GPU and graphics cards, suitable for seismic interpretation workgroups, to very large hybrid clusters located in data centers, which Bull is already delivering to government and energy customers. ffA's domain expertise and involvement with a large number of major oil and gas companies' petrotechnical users combined with Bull's expertise in hybrid systems will provide a fast track for innovation and improved turnaround times within 3-D interpretation and modeling workflows.

"We are very pleased to announce this partnership with ffA, which is an important milestone in our efforts to gain further traction within the upstream oil and gas industry," commented Guy Gueritz, business development director for Oil & Gas at Bull. "Our involvement with oil companies' R&D groups for accelerated seismic imaging is complemented by ffA's automated interpretation and modeling tools, which plug into established 3-D interpretation and modeling workflows and make use of more scalable and powerful technologies, which are built into our extreme computing systems.  These outperform the traditional commodity platforms currently in use within the oil industry and will deliver significant productivity advantages to those who adopt them."

The two companies will jointly exhibit at EAGE, the premier conference and exhibition for geoscientists, which takes place at the RAI Amsterdam between June 9-11. ffA will show their SVI Pro seismic analysis package running on a Bull Novascale R425 server, with NVIDIA GPU and graphics and a large Barco LC display.