ACADEMIA

InfiniBand Continues to Gain Momentum in High Performance Computing Environments -- In a show of support for the open source-based OpenFabric Alliance, Scali, the leader in high performance clustering solutions for Linux datacenters, today announced that its Scali MPI Connect product now supports the OpenFabrics software stack for InfiniBand. Scali is currently shipping the update to its customers at no cost. Scali MPI Connect maximizes the effectiveness of the leading interconnect technologies that facilitate communication among cluster nodes. With this new release, users who choose to leverage the OpenFabrics software stack will be able to link to the Scali MPI Connect product, enabling them to combine the most flexible InfiniBand support with the leading MPI solution. OpenFabrics software is a single, open source software stack that supports RDMA over InfiniBand interconnect technology. It enables users to have a single, consistent software stack for use across all their InfiniBand environments, regardless of the manufacturer. The OpenFabrics Alliance is an open source project supported by organizations like SilverStorm, Intel, Cisco, Dell and Sun, and its OpenFabrics stack is expected to gain widespread acceptance in the Linux community as an important component to high performance computing. Scali's support for highly heterogeneous interconnect environments will be further extended as the OpenFabric Alliance expands the software stack to support RDMA over Ethernet (iWARP). The flexibility to support multiple interconnects with a single software stack is integral to Scali's commitment to offering transport agnostic software for heterogeneous cluster configurations. Reini Florin, VP of Marketing, SilverStorm commented, "We have been involved in the development of the OpenFabrics software stack from its inception. Scali is a valued partner of SilverStorm's and their support of OpenFabrics is another example of their leadership in performance computing and Linux clustering technology." "We continue to see tremendous growth in the use of InfiniBand interconnect within the HPC market," said Bjorn Skare, President and CEO of Scali. "We see the availability of the transport agnostic OpenFabrics software stack as a great way to simplify user access to the power of high performance interconnects and we expect this to be a key requirement for the MPI market going forward." Scali's MPI Connect is compatible with other interconnect platforms and standards including TCP/IP, Gigabit Ethernet, Myrinet, and SCI.