ACADEMIA

Voltaire today announced that its 40 Gb/s InfiniBand solutions are available for HP ProLiant SL6000 Scalable System, part of the new HP Extreme Scale-Out (ExSO) portfolio introduced this month. The solution is ideal for scale-out data centers that enable high performance computing (HPC) — as well as cloud-based services and Web 2.0 businesses.

The powerful combination of Voltaire’s software and InfiniBand switching capabilities bring high-performance, low latency and extreme scalability to HP’s newest server offering, which is optimized for scale-out customers to greatly reduce costs, maximize power efficiency and maintain flexibility. In addition to blazing performance, Voltaire’s 40 Gb/s InfiniBand switches require less than 6-watts-per-port power consumption, which helps maximize the overall solution’s high density per watt.

“The HP ExSO portfolio addresses the extreme scale-out needs of customers using HPC applications as well as in cloud and Web 2.0 businesses to help them compete more effectively on a global scale by lowering cost, increasing efficiency and accelerating time to market. This makes Voltaire 40 Gb/s InfiniBand the perfect high performance, scale-out fabric to complement the solution,” said Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing, Voltaire. “Voltaire 40 Gb/s InfiniBand is based on industry-standard technologies to deliver the performance, scalability and energy efficiency requirements of high-performance next generation data centers.”

This new solution for scale-out, high-performance computing customers from HP combines Voltaire’s Grid Director 40 Gb/s InfiniBand switches with the HP ProLiant SL6000 server family, which uses an ultra-efficient, modular “skinless” systems architecture that replaces the traditional chassis and rack form factors with an extremely lightweight rail and tray design, enabling customers to quickly and easily build solutions that meet extreme scale-out workload requirements. The solution uses Voltaire OFED software to enable applications to utilize the exceptional performance of RDMA that is inherent in InfiniBand hardware. Voltaire OFED software includes enterprise-grade features including Quality of Service (QoS) management capabilities that enable unified LAN, IPC and SAN applications over the same wire.

“Customers deploying scale-out computing need solutions that maximize performance per square foot as well as minimize energy consumption to lower costs and improve data center efficiency,” said Ed Turkel, business development manager, Scalable Computing and Infrastructure, HP. “Voltaire’s 40 Gb/s InfiniBand solutions extend the performance delivered by HP ProLiant SL6000 servers while lowering power consumption to help maximize the server density per watt.”

Solution Showcase at ISC ‘09

The HP ExSO portfolio, including HP ProLiant SL6000 and Voltaire 40 Gb/s InfiniBand, will be showcased in HP booth 210 at ISC ’09, June 23-25, 2009 in Hamburg, Germany. Voltaire will showcase 40 Gb/s InfiniBand and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches and software solutions in booth 540.

Availability

The solution is expected to be available from HP this summer.