APPLICATIONS

PathScale, the developer of innovative software and hardware solutions to accelerate high performance computing, today announced, at SC05, the release of a low-profile form factor InfiniPath HTX InfiniBand Adapter and the release of version 1.1 of its InfiniPath software. This latest InfiniPath software release fully supports the OpenIB Gen 2 software stack and is designed to maximize application scaling and performance on InfiniBand-based Linux clusters. In addition to supporting the OpenIB stacks, the new InfiniPath 1.1 software release includes a number of improvements in overall performance and scalability on MPI and TCP applications. PathScale has tested the scalability of dozens of well-known HPC applications on the new 576 Processor AMD Emerald cluster with outstanding results. Using the newly released software, record-breaking performance has been achieved on the HPC Challenge, Pallas, and Topcrunch benchmarks. The 1.1 release also includes support for a broader range of Linux distributions, including support for RHEL4, ROCKS 4.0.0, SUSE 10, Fedora Core 4 and CentOS 4.0. The 1.1 release is immediately available to all existing customers and can be downloaded from the PathScale support web site. OpenIB was developed by the OpenIB Alliance, an industry association chartered to deliver a single, open-source software stack for deploying InfiniBand solutions. The OpenIB Alliance, founded in June 2004, is comprised of the leading computer technology vendors and end-user organizations. OpenIB provides a single, open-source standard that ensures interoperability between software stacks and hardware products. This promotes competition in the market and enables PathScale to help drive broad adoption of InfiniBand, while delivering the most scalable and efficient solutions for high performance computing. “With the release of the InfiniPath 1.1 software with OpenIB support, PathScale is proving that InfiniBand scales to levels only previously accessible with proprietary interconnects,” said Scott Metcalf, CEO of PathScale. “PathScale is showing its leadership position in the InfiniBand world by showcasing the scalability of InfiniBand and being the first vendor to bring a supported version of OpenIB to market. PathScale is giving the scientific and engineering communities more choices in the marketplace, enabling them to realize the benefits of a truly open standards-based high-performance interconnect.” PathScale is also introducing a half-height, or low profile, InfiniBand adapter card at a reduced price of $795. Because the InfiniPath interconnect improves the efficiency of the entire cluster, the reduced price makes it the obvious choice for end-users sensitive to both price/performance and scalability. The new card, which can be mounted either horizontally in a 1U server or vertically in a 2U server, gives cluster users more flexibility for deployment options. “Voltaire is excited to see Pathscale’s commitment to OpenIB as demonstrated in its latest software release,” said Patrick Guay, vice president of marketing at Voltaire. “Coupled with the availability of the new low-profile card, we feel that the choices our customers can enjoy have once again been expanded.” The PathScale InfiniPath interconnect delivers on the promise of InfiniBand and cluster computing by significantly lowering communications latency while eliminating bottlenecks that can slow down complex applications. The technology is enabling scientists, engineers, and researchers to more effectively solve a whole new class of computational challenges, from weather modeling and aerospace design to drug discovery and oil and gas research.