BIG DATA

In yet another first for the high-performance computing market, Silicon Graphics today announced that it will offer 10 Gigabit (Gb) Ethernet connectivity across its product offering of servers, workstations, advanced graphics systems and storage solutions. SGI is offering the new PCI-X adapter option for customers who increasingly need to transfer massive data sets between large systems, or as an ingest engine for huge I/O data streams. By increasing Ethernet bandwidth up to 10 times over today's standard interconnect speeds, SGI enables those customers to move and process data via Ethernet faster than ever before. Products now featuring 10Gb Ethernet include SGI® Altix® servers and superclusters, SGI® Origin® servers, Silicon Graphics® Tezro® visual workstations, Onyx® visualization systems, and SGI® InfiniteStorage SAN, NAS, and DLM solutions. Customers in a broad range of advanced computing environments—including government, defense, sciences and media—are working with ever more complex data sets. Virtual cockpits used in distributed mission training, for example, process terabytes of data in real time to produce interactive visual simulations that often are driven by multiple visualization systems and displays. With 10Gb Ethernet connectivity, transferring simulation data from one cockpit to the next, which is often required to synchronizing training environments among multiple pilots, can happen in a fraction of the time it takes over traditional Ethernet connections. "It's standard for the 10-year ocean simulations running today to output data sets on the order of 2 terabytes," said Walt Brooks, chief of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division. "Developers hope to improve the performance of this calculation to finish in one day. Moving this volume of data between systems can slow down the development and data analysis process. Faster LAN networks such as 10Gb Ethernet are needed to keep pace with the volume of data generated on today's supercomputing systems." In media environments, where bandwidth-hungry film and HD video resolution content transfer and delivery are time-sensitive, 10Gb Ethernet interface capabilities enable facilities to move data quickly and accurately. For instance, in telecine environments, film is scanned and digitized, and then stored as data. An entire feature film at 2K resolution could produce a data set of some eight to 10 terabytes during the editing, finishing and mastering process, so moving data of that magnitude quickly and efficiently is crucial to meet theatrical release deadlines. Ten Gb connectivity in SGI InfiniteStorage and the Tezro workstation offer a unique solution for the media industry. For users of SGI® servers, NAS storage and visualization systems, SGI will offer the Xframe 10 Gigabit Ethernet card from S2io, Inc. The 10Gb Ethernet adapter for SGI® systems can be placed in a standard PCI-X slot for port aggregation, potentially replacing multiple Gb Ethernet ports with a single 10Gb Ethernet port, and significantly increasing performance and lowering total cost of ownership. The IEEE 802.3ae compliant card leverages existing data center infrastructure, requiring no changes to existing 50 micron cabling, operating systems or network administration tools. The driver for this 10Gb Ethernet technology has been optimized to balance superior throughput performance with the quality of service in error handling and other demands of mission-critical production deployments. "Data sets are only growing larger, particularly in the HPC and media environments," "This new 10Gb Ethernet offering addresses the escalating need among our customers to move big data between large production systems and from storage environments as efficiently as possible. And by allowing data center customers to share files over NFS or CIFS at 10Gb Ethernet speed, SGI will help users increase their productivity with quicker remote access to their data over Ethernet. We are extremely pleased to offer the Xframe card as another standard connectivity option for our customers' HPC, visualization and storage needs." The 10Gb Ethernet adapter for SGI systems is available today for both 64-bit Linux® and IRIX® operating systems.