ACADEMIA

Quadrics, an industry leader in high performance interconnect technology, today announced the commissioning of a development cluster based on its QsNetII interconnect technology and the AMD64 computing platform. The collaboration between the companies combines the AMD Opteron processor with its revolutionary Direct Connect Architecture and Quadrics' QsNetII high performance interconnect - a combination that has produced some truly stunning performance statistics. The cluster offers registered users a unique opportunity to benchmark the QsNetII interconnect or test their own application code's performance on Quadrics hardware. The cluster is based on the Quadrics E-Series 32 port switch and thirty-two 2P AMD Opteron processor compute nodes. To access the cluster users can register at the AMD Developer Center. "We receive a lot of requests for testing home-grown and commercial applications on QsNetII", commented Cristoforo Romanelli, CEO of Quadrics. "The collaboration with AMD means we can now offer a secure, independent environment in which users can discover how the unique features of our technology can improve the performance and total cost of ownership of their Linux cluster environments." The very high bandwidth (910 Mbytes/sec), ultra low latency (1.29 microseconds for MPI) and reliability of the QsNet technology have been key factors in positioning Quadrics as a world leader. The E-Series product family has been specifically designed to meet the requirements of departmental installations with single chassis solutions at affordable prices. "We are collaborating with Quadrics on this project to help end users ensure that AMD Opteron processor-based clusters are reinforced with a proven interconnect framework," said Pat Patla, director, server/workstation marketing, Microprocessor Solutions Sector, AMD. "This cluster demonstrates that the AMD Opteron processor with Direct Connect Architecture is well-suited for demanding compute-intensive environments where scalability, low latencies and high bandwidth capabilities are most important."