AUTOMOTIVE

Together, Dell and Microsoft are working on hardware and software components essential for a complete standards-based InfiniBand solution for enterprise customers. The companies' engineering organizations are directly engaged to establish a framework for supporting InfiniBand fabrics that integrates them into the ubiquitous Fibre Channel and Ethernet based Data Center infrastructures. Dell has provided PowerEdge(tm) servers to Microsoft for its software development activities. "We believe that InfiniBand, with its high bandwidth and low latency, will become a significant server blade interconnect technology," said Cliff Reeves, vice president, Windows Server Division, Microsoft Corp. "We will support InfiniBand in future versions of the Microsoft Windows(R) Server family of operating systems. This non-proprietary interconnect can enable a new generation of Windows based servers with substantially higher density, performance, reliability and lower cost. We are pleased that we share with Dell a common vision for a new approach to server technology." Dell plans to integrate InfiniBand technology into its next generation PowerEdge "brick" servers with Intel's Xeon processors. These modular systems provide customers simplified server management, scalability and flexibility. They offer more than twice the density of traditional rack-mounted servers at a significantly lower price, making them ideal for back-end data center applications traditionally dominated by proprietary solutions. "We're committed to investing in technology that promises to bring increased performance and lower cost of ownership to our customers," said Randy Groves, vice president of Dell's Enterprise Systems Group. "By working collaboratively with Microsoft to support InfiniBand development for industry standard servers and operating systems, we continue to redefine the economics of how our customers build and manage complex computer networks."