ACADEMIA

SPECIAL COVERAGE FROM ISC2006 Industry’s First 20 Gigabit/Second Blade Server Interconnect Provides Unparalleled Bandwidth, Performance and Scalability Out of the Box -- Voltaire, the worldwide leader in grid backbone solutions, today announced that its Double Data Rate (DDR) InfiniBand solutions will provide the high performance switching and storage connectivity and management for the HP BladeSystem c-Class architecture. Collaborating with HP as a BladeSystem Solution Builder program member, Voltaire DDR InfiniBand switches and software deliver double the performance of existing 10 Gigabits/second interconnect offerings and provide industry-leading performance and scalability to the HP BladeSystem architecture. “The combination of DDR InfiniBand and HP BladeSystem offers customers an extremely high performance, manageable and cost-effective solution for large clusters and grids,” said Patrick Guay, senior vice president, marketing, Voltaire. “We are extremely pleased to continue our long-standing relationship with HP to deliver this ground-breaking solution to our customers.” The HP BladeSystem c-Class offers servers, storage, networking, as well as virtualization, power and cooling, and management capabilities in one consolidated design. Voltaire GridStack InfiniBand software stack, which features a comprehensive suite of upper layer protocols that are ideal for high performance computing clusters, utility computing, grids and enterprise data center applications, provides the underlying InfiniBand support in the HP BladeSystem solution. GridStack is bundled with HP XC System Software and is supported by HP MPI, HP StorageWorks Scalable File Share, and HP Scalable Visualization Array. For InfiniBand fabric management of small BladeSystem cluster environments consisting of one or two chassis, a server-based version of Voltaire GridVision InfiniBand Fabric Management Software will be available. This provides customers with the same functionality and user interface available with Voltaire multi-service Grid Director switches, and GridVision management software. Voltaire multi-service switches offer integrated InfiniBand, Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel connectivity in a single enclosure and are the industry’s only solutions that allow true switching between InfiniBand, Ethernet and Fibre Channel networks. Voltaire DDR InfiniBand solutions leverage the same design and interchangeable components as Voltaire Grid Director switches. Customers will value the improved performance, lower latency and the ability to use fewer switch chassis, switching chips and cables, thereby minimizing complexity and costs for clusters and grids using HP BladeSystem. Voltaire DDR solutions can also be inter-mixed with Voltaire single data rate (SDR) solutions in the same fabric. “By bringing Voltaire’s expertise in InfiniBand solutions to the HP BladeSystem, we can offer customers the industry’s fastest and most scalable cluster interconnect – a first for blades,” said Bruce Toal, marketing director, High Performance Computing, HP. InfiniBand products for HP BladeSystem c-Class will be available in the fall of 2006. Voltaire Double Data Rate InfiniBand solutions are also available today as part of the HP Unified Cluster Portfolio. Demonstration at ISC 2006 Voltaire will showcase its DDR product portfolio, including the Grid Director ISR 9096 multi-service switch, at the International Supercomputer Conference in Dresden, Germany, June 27-29, 2006 in booth C18. HP will demonstrate HP BladeSystem c-Class with Voltaire DDR InfiniBand in booth D19-D22.