ACADEMIA

Force10 Networks today announced that the OU Supercomputing Center for Education and Research (OSCER) at the University of Oklahoma has deployed the TeraScale E-Series switch/routers in its newest cluster, which was recently ranked as the 54th fastest supercomputer in the world by the Top500.org. The new supercomputer leverages the density and resiliency of the Force10 TeraScale E-Series to process a peak of more than six trillion calculations per second. "This supercomputer puts us in the top one percent of all U.S. universities in terms of our computing resources and provides our students, faculty and affiliates with a state-of-the-art tool to conduct advanced research," said Dr. Henry Neeman, director of the OU Supercomputing Center for Education and Research. "Our users require scalability, performance and reliability in our Gigabit Ethernet system, so that they can advance the cutting edge in disciplines from aerospace to zoology." The 512-node supercomputer is designed to provide University of Oklahoma students, staff, faculty and their affiliates with state-of-the-art computing resources for conducting research across a variety of fields, including weather forecasting and high energy physics. In this cluster supercomputer, the Force10 TeraScale E1200 provides the reliable and scalable Gigabit Ethernet connectivity between the Dell PowerEdge servers and a large scale Storage Area Network. Supporting 1,260 Gigabit Ethernet ports per chassis, the TeraScale E1200 provides the capacity that will allow OSCER to cost effectively expand its cluster as computing demands increase. "With the University of Oklahoma relying on this supercomputer for its complex computing projects, reliable performance is imperative, as is the ability to scale as needs increase," said Andrew Feldman, vice president of marketing at Force10 Networks. "The TeraScale E-Series is integrated seamlessly with the Dell servers to guarantee maximum uptime and provides industry-leading density to ensure the supercomputer can easily expand its computing capacity." OSCER provides the University of Oklahoma community with high performance computing infrastructure to facilitate education and research. The new supercomputer is the ninth fastest supercomputer among all U.S. universities and the fourth fastest among U.S. universities that do not host any of the National Science Foundation's three national supercomputing centers. According to the latest Top500.org list, 23 of the top 500 fastest supercomputers in the world rely on the Force10 TeraScale E-Series family of switch/routers. For the first time, all systems on the list exceeded one Teraflop per second, and the total combined performance of all 500 systems is now 1.69 Petaflops per second. Force10's TeraScale E-Series leads the industry in density, performance and resiliency. The TeraScale E-Series supports 1,260 Gigabit and 56 line-rate 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports in a single chassis and can process one billion packets per second, the highest in the industry.