ACADEMIA

SilverStorm Technologies today announced that Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) has selected SilverStorm's InfiniBand director class switching solutions to upgrade the InfiniBand cluster interconnect of System X, Virginia Tech's 12 teraflop 1,100 node Apple-based supercomputer. "We are leveraging SilverStorm's latest end-to-end clustering solutions to take System X to new levels of performance and availability," said Kevin Shinpaugh, director of research and cluster computing, Virginia Tech. "SilverStorm is clearly committed to providing the best InfiniBand hardware, software and support for the Apple platform." Virginia Tech is a leader in high performance computing in academia, designing and building the world's fastest academic supercomputer, System X. With more than 12.25 teraflops of sustained Linpack performance, System X was listed as the 14th fastest supercomputer in the world on the most recent TOP500 list of supercomputers. SilverStorm Technologies offers the industry's most powerful, most reliable high performance cluster interconnect solution for the Apple marketplace and recently was awarded the prestigious Apple design award for best Mac OS X server solution. SilverStorm is the only InfiniBand technology vendor that supports all three mainstream host platforms: Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. "SilverStorm Technologies is pleased to support Virginia Tech in upgrading System X to the latest generation of InfiniBand technology," said Russ Hawkins, CEO of SilverStorm Technologies. "By deploying the 9000 series modular platform, Virginia Tech can meet today's network requirement and flexibly upgrade to new interconnect speeds and fabric technologies as Virginia Tech's future requirements evolve." A demonstration of Virginia Tech's new cluster topology based on SilverStorm's networking solution will be on display in booth #470 at Supercomputing 05, in Seattle, Wash. from November 14-17, 2005.