Voltaire Expands InfiniBand Alliance with SGI

The combined solution is ideal for clustered applications that handle large data sets such as computer aided design, bioinformatics, chemistry, oil and gas exploration and databases. Customers of SGI and Voltaire exemplify some of the world's most innovative High-Performance Computing use environments. They include NASA's 20x512p, 10,240 total processor Columbia system, the University of Minnesota's 8x16p cluster totaling 128 processors, and the Alabama Supercomputer Center's five-node, 56-processor cluster. The new OEM relationship complements the existing Voltaire and SGI reseller agreement under which SGI Professional Services offers Voltaire multiprotocol switches, InfiniBand-to-IP and InfiniBand-to-Fibre Channel routers, adapters and software to enterprise and HPC customers seeking high performance Linux cluster solutions based on the SGI Altix platform. "SGI and Voltaire have had a close and successful relationship for some time now to bring customers standards-based clustered solutions that deliver the utmost bandwidth and latency performance," said Jeff Greenwald, senior director, Server Product Marketing and Management, SGI. "Building on that success, we are now more tightly integrating Voltaire InfiniBand interconnect with preconfigured Altix 1350 clusters to make it easier for our customers to deploy and benefit from high performance clusters." "This new OEM agreement is an important milestone in our partnership with SGI," said Ronnie Kenneth, chairman and CEO, Voltaire. "We look forward to continuing to work with SGI to provide customers with a world-class cluster solution for complex and demanding applications." SGI Altix 1350: Scale Clusters at the Node Announced separately today, the new SGI Altix 1350 cluster is based on the acclaimed SGI Altix 350 server. The new Altix 1350 is a factory-integrated cluster that matches superior Altix performance and functionality while reducing total cost of ownership. Altix 1350 cluster nodes scale up to 16 Intel Itanium 2 processors on a single instance of the Linux OS. A new router adds the option to scale to 32 processors per node. By scaling at the node instead of adding new nodes every time computing needs increase, customers spend less on software licensing costs and interconnect fabric, with fewer nodes to connect, manage and provision. For technical users seeking supercomputing-class capabilities in the industry's most cost-effective, scalable platform, the Altix 350 system with Voltaire InfiniBand interconnect offers leading price/performance along with "expand on demand" flexibility in an industry-standard architecture. Altix 350 systems can scale up to 32 Intel Itanium 2 processors per node, providing superior performance and throughput for demanding HPC workloads. Schlumberger Certifies SGI and Voltaire Solution for Leading Oil & Gas Application The joint SGI - Voltaire solution also has been certified for Schlumberger ECLIPSE, the leading software solution for the oil and gas exploration industry. Voltaire InfiniBand interconnect delivers a performance boost to the reservoir simulation software in distributed computing environments.