ACADEMIA

SPECIAL COVERAGE FROM ISC2006 -- Latest List Reveals Number of InfiniBand-based Supercomputers Grew 33% Since November 2005 -- Mellanox Technologies today announced that InfiniBand continues to be the fastest growing cluster interconnect, according to the 27th edition of the TOP500 list of the world's most powerful computers. Sixteen new InfiniBand-based supercomputers have registered in the June 2006 list while three of the top ten most prominent ranking positions use InfiniBand interconnect -- all based on Mellanox silicon solutions. Published twice a year, the TOP500 list ranks the most powerful computer systems according to the Linpack benchmark rating system. The list, available at Top500.org, was presented by Dr. Erich Strohmaier at the International SuperComputing 2006 -- the world's leading conference on high-performance computing (HPC). Further highlights of InfiniBand interconnect usage on the June 2006 Top500 list include: -- The three most powerful supercomputers using industry-standard InfiniBand interconnect are the only entries in the top 10 that use commercially available components - the rest are built on proprietary technologies -- InfiniBand is the only high-speed, low-latency interconnect that reported an increasing rate of 33%, including 16 new supercomputers on the list, while proprietary interconnects, such as Myrinet, showed continued decline -- The average efficiency of all reported InfiniBand-based supercomputers is 72% -- far superior to the average efficiency of Gigabit Ethernet connected clusters at 53% "InfiniBand's continued growth matched with the decline in usage of proprietary interconnects demonstrates that high-performance compute clusters favor industry-standard technologies," said Thad Omura, vice president of product marketing at Mellanox Technologies. "Widely available 10Gb/s and 20Gb/s InfiniBand performance interconnect solutions are proven to efficiently scale multi-thousand node supercomputers today." Mellanox congratulates the following 40 companies reporting InfiniBand connectivity use on the June 2006 Top500.org list: Installation Site Rankings 4 NASA/Ames Research Center/NAS 6 Sandia National Laboratories 7 GSIC Center, Tokyo Institute of Technology 28 Virginia Tech 49 Institute of Physical and Chemical Res. (RIKEN) 56 Wright-Patterson Air Force Base/DoD ASC 65 Texas Advanced Computing Center/Univ. of Texas 66 University of Sherbrooke 68 Intel 69 Los Alamos National Laboratory 73 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center 74 University of North Carolina 78 NCSA 88 University of Oklahoma 90 Sun 91 KTH - Royal Institute of Technology 96 Los Alamos National Laboratory 130 NCSA 138 Classified 139 Hewlett-Packard 190 IBM On Demand Center 191 IBM On Demand Center 192 IBM On Demand Center 210 Hewlett-Packard 224 Galactic Computing (Shenzhen) Ltd. 230 Los Alamos National Laboratory 255 Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology 280 The University of Florida High-Performance Computing Center 299 CINECA 367 Trinity College Dublin 436 SARA (Stichting Academisch Rekencentrum) 450 Sandia National Laboratories 452 Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory 455 Intel 460 Texas Advanced Computing Center/Univ. of Texas 464 CILEA 465 NERSC/LBNL 483 AMD Developer Center 488 Arizona State University High Performance Computing Center 490 United Institute of Informatics Problems