ACADEMIA

SPECIAL COVERAGE FROM ISC2006 -- Mellanox Technologies today announced its InfiniBand high-performance, low-latency fabric solutions are ready to deploy with Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003. Leveraged from OpenFabrics.org open source community development, Mellanox InfiniBand adapter software drivers are designed, qualified and optimized for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to meet the needs of high-performance computing (HPC) applications in scientific research, oil and gas exploration, automotive design, financial simulation, clustered databases and more. "Mellanox families of 10Gb/s and 20Gb/s, low-latency, InfiniBand adapters and switch silicon devices, combined with the manageability functions of Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, can easily and efficiently scale from as little as two nodes up to multi-thousand node supercomputers," said Thad Omura, vice president of product marketing at Mellanox Technologies. "With its high-reliability, optimal CPU utilization, and price/performance benefits, Mellanox InfiniBand is the ideal fabric choice for commodity clustering solutions." The Microsoft Advantage Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 provides an integrated standards-base platform for high-performance computing applications. It will accelerate the time-to-insight for engineers, scientists and analysts by providing a HPC platform that is simple to deploy, operate and integrate with existing infrastructure, tools, and applications. The Microsoft message passing interface (MPI) in Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 uses the WinSock Direct protocol for best performance and CPU efficiency. Microsoft MPI utilizes InfiniBand interconnect for latency-sensitive and high-bandwidth applications. "Microsoft is pleased to be working with Mellanox Technologies to deliver an optimal computing experience to our customers," said Kyril Faenov, director of high-performance computing at Microsoft Corp. "Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 with InfiniBand low-latency, high-speed interconnect is key for performance-sensitive mainstream applications." Industry-Leading Application Performance Wolfram Research is the world's leading developer of technical computing software, offering organization-wide computing solutions. Mathematica, the company's flagship product, is completely compatible with Windows Computer Cluster Server 2003 and provides unmatched computational power and convenient user interface used to solve the most demanding problems in mathematics, science, engineering, and finance. This solution is relied on by millions of users around the world and has been the recipient of many industry awards for technical excellence. "The cluster interconnect is a critical element in the execution of gridMathematica. A higher performing interconnect enables gridMathematica to solve more complex and interesting problems," said Roger Germundsson, executive director of Research and Development, Wolfram Research, Inc. "For gridMathematica computations, Mellanox InifiniBand provides a substantial performance boost -- both in regard to latency and bandwidth -- compared to a gigabit Ethernet connection. Our users of gridMathematica will be very pleased with this performance boost as a result of our partnership with Mellanox." Microsoft Compute Cluster Server 2003 also provides powerful environment for financial applications through the use of programs such as Microsoft Office Excel. The upcoming release of the Microsoft Office 12 Excel architecture will help enterprise customers optimized their Excel processing environment. Mellanox is demonstrating the most common financial simulations tool, Monte Carlo, utilizing Excel services on Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 at the International Supercomputer Conference in Dresden, Germany, June 27-30, 2006.