Dell recognizes CGG's Linux cluster work

CGG AWARDED DELL CENTER FOR RESEARCH EXCELLENCE FOR WORK IN SEISMIC ANALYSIS
AND TECHNICAL COMPUTING

More Than 3,000-server Supercomputing Cluster in Houston Contributes to 30
Tera FLOPs of Overall Computing Power

HOUSTON, Sept. 10, 2003 - Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell today
designated CGG (Compagnie Generale de Geophysique) as a Dell Center for
Research Excellence, citing the company's innovative use of technology in
the field of seismic research for oil and gas exploration.

CGG, a global oil services company, uses more than 3,000 low-cost Dell
PowerEdge servers linked together to form powerful compute engines, called
high-performance computing clusters (HPCC).  The clusters efficiently
analyze seismic data that can help to identify and model oil and gas
reservoirs around the world.

"CGG is a pioneer in its field and has demonstrated that the strategic use
of standardized supercomputing can deliver cost and performance benefits for
commercial applications," said Mr. Dell.  "They have proven that
standards-based systems are scalable, powerful and the best technology
investment in the long-term to provide leading-edge service and maintain
competitive advantage."

CGG is the first corporate organization to receive this distinction from
Dell and has the largest Dell-based HPCC deployment in its U.S. headquarters
in Houston.  The company deployed the Houston cluster in 2001 with 128 Dell
PowerEdge servers and has since grown to more than 3,000 Dell systems.  CGG
engineers have led in the development of tools and processes that enable
them to manage and add capacity to their clusters, which they have shared
with Dell engineering.

"We are honored to be recognized as a Dell Center for Research Excellence,"
said Robert Brunck, chairman and CEO of CGG.  "The geophysical industry has
consistently been at the forefront of efforts to push back the limits of
computing capacity and it therefore gives me considerable personal pleasure
to see our industry being recognized and to see CGG being rewarded as a
computer pioneer in this way."

"This distinction is a credit to our engineers and the deep partnership we
have developed with Dell's engineering team," said Guillaume Cambois, CGG's
executive vice president for CGG Data Processing and Reservoir Services.
"Several years ago CGG recognized that we needed to be able to use the
latest technologies to maintain our competitive advantage and continue to
improve our products - HPCC was the vehicle to accomplish this, using
low-cost, high-performing standardized technology."

CGG's unique and proprietary applications and tools help optimize and
maintain the world's energy resources.  CGG began its work on Dell clusters
three years ago with a 32-node cluster of Precision workstations that was
used to port its UNIX applications to the Linux environment.  The company
now uses server clusters globally to process seismic data that helps
identify new oil and gas reservoirs, as well as to model existing reservoirs
in order to help optimize production.

CGG uses HPCC throughout its operations worldwide - deploying a more than
3,000-node Dell PowerEdge server configuration in Houston, a 512-node Dell
cluster in Foxboro, England and a smaller Dell cluster in Canada.  The
clusters use multiple generations of Intel Pentium and Xeon processors,
exemplifying the investment protection inherent to standards-based systems
and technologies in scaled-out environments.  Worldwide, CGG now has
generalized use of HPCC and has a total compute capacity of over 30 Tera
FLOPs (trillion floating point operations per second).

"Most impressive is the high-utilization of the CGG clusters - at close to
100 percent capacity for sometimes months at a time," added Mr. Dell.  "The
processes and tools that CGG has developed for large-scale configurations
have helped pave the way for further use of standardized supercomputing
clusters in corporate settings."

About Dell
Dell Inc. (Nasdaq:  DELL) is a premier provider of products and services
required for customers worldwide to build their information-technology and
Internet infrastructures.  Company revenue for the past four quarters
totaled $38.2 billion.  Dell, through its direct business model, designs,
manufactures and customizes products and services to customer requirements,
and offers an extensive selection of software and peripherals.  Information
on Dell and its products can be obtained at www.dell.com.

# # #
Dell is a trademark of Dell Inc.
Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others.