AUTOMOTIVE

Force10 Networks today announced that Tianjin Dawning Computer Industry Co., Ltd. has deployed its resilient C-Series switches and the S2410 access switch as the high performance foundation for China’s new Magic Cube Supercomputer at the Shanghai Supercomputer Center (SSC). The announcement with Magic Cube (previously known as the Dawning 5000A), means that Force10 now serves as the high-speed Ethernet network component to each of the fastest supercomputers in Asia, North America and Europe.

“The tremendous computational power enables Magic Cube to provide support for a host of private and public initiatives, such as oil exploration, bio-medical, gene research, aviation and aeronautics,” says Hua Nie, the vice president of Dawning. “The Force10 switching solutions deliver the non-blocking, line-rate performance we need to help ensure research efficiency while its industry-leading port density contributes to lower costs and a simpler network design.”

Dawning deployed five C300s and the S2410 because of its optimum price/performance ratio as well as their 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) port density that facilitates seamless growth while ensuring investment protection. As one of the top 10 fastest supercomputers in the world when it was put into operation on June 15^th, 2009, Magic Cube maintains 180 teraflop/s (trillions of floating-point operations per second) of computing speed, and needed the C300’s 5 microsecond switching latency under full load for 64 byte frames and its switch fabric capacity of 1.536 Tbps to help eliminate any bandwidth-related issues. The inherent reliability built into the Force10 switching architecture provides the always-on access the supercomputer requires regardless of traffic conditions. The S2410 provides additional bandwidth with ultra low latency to help minimize any network bottlenecks during peak traffic periods.

By providing up to 384 line-rate 10/100/1000Base-T ports and as many as 64 line-rate 10 GbE ports with pluggable XFP modules per device, the C300 delivers an industry-leading port density that enables seamless network expansion as the supercomputer continues to expand its reach and support additional applications.

“The Magic Cube Supercomputer reflects a growing trend in HPCC (high performance cluster computing) of linking multiple computers over high-speed Ethernet networks to leverage their massive and collective computing power,” says James Hanley, president of field operations, Force10 Networks. “Force10 is in a leadership position in HPCC in China, and elsewhere, because our solutions are purpose-built to support these demanding environments by providing the reliability, scalability, and congestion management technology needed to optimize supercomputer performance.”

The Force10 Reliable Networking product portfolio supports advances in reliability, network control and scalability that enable enterprises to lower their total cost of ownership. By building a flexible network that is ready to support emerging and evolving applications, enterprises can optimize their networks for current needs as well as future requirements.