ACADEMIA

Voltaire, the leader in interconnect solutions for high performance grid computing, announced that HP has deployed Voltaire grid interconnect to power a high performance computing cluster at HPC1, Europe's first on demand computing center. Customers leasing processor time from HPC1 can now leverage the performance of Voltaire grid interconnect -- based on 10 Gbps InfiniBand technology -- to run complex calculations and simulations faster and more efficiently than ever before. Located near Paris, HPC1 uses the latest industry standard technologies to offer services in scientific computing and open source by leasing CPU cycles to customers in industries such as oil and gas, manufacturing and bioinformatics. HP selected several Voltaire ISR 9024, twenty-four port InfiniBand switch routers to power a 240 CPU cluster running Mandrakesoft's Mandrakelinux, the leading European Linux distribution. "InfiniBand clusters running Linux significantly increases the speed of compute jobs submitted by our customers," said Jean-Marie Verdun, Linux Business Development Manager for HP France. "Not only do our customers appreciate the improved performance, but so do we, as it has positive revenue implications because we can provide services to more customers in a given time period." HPC1 offers support for many software vendors including Mandrakesoft, Platform Computing, and GridXpert. Mandrakesoft and Voltaire recently reciprocally certified their solutions to collaborate on delivering clustered solutions to the enterprise and HPC markets. The combined InfiniBand-Linux solution was tested and tuned for large clusters and grids that require a scalable networking storage infrastructure. "InfiniBand is an increasingly important technology for Linux clusters and utility computing grids," said Frédéric Lepied, CTO, Mandrakesoft. "Moreover, the acceptance of InfiniBand to the Linux kernel is a testament to the maturation and stability of the technology and we expect to see continued widespread adoption." "We are extremely pleased to have completed joint certification with Mandrakesoft, a leader in the Linux business community," said John Asher, vice president of EMEA sales, Voltaire. "Working with Mandrakesoft, we look forward to delivering grid and InfiniBand Linux cluster solutions that meet the demanding compute requirements of customers around the globe."