SALT LAKE CITY -- Linux Networx announced today Sandia National Laboratories has issued an order for Linux Networx to build a 128-node Evolocity II (E2) cluster system, which will be the largest InfiniBand cluster announced to date. Sandia will use the system to evaluate InfiniBand technology from Fabric Networks by running scientific computing applications on the 128-node cluster. "We will be testing a variety of scientific applications on the InfiniBand Linux cluster, and we are excited about the possibilities of this new technology," said Matt Leininger, senior member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories. "We are interested in the combination of low-latency, high-bandwidth, low CPU utilization and open standards offered by InfiniBand technology." InfiniBand is an open standard clustering, communication, storage and embedded interconnect with transmission rates of 10 gigabytes per second. Instead of sending data in parallel, InfiniBand sends data in serial and can handle multiple channels of data at a time in a multiplexing signal. "Linux Networx is always benchmarking and validating new clustering technologies like InfiniBand," said Joshua Harr, Linux Networx CTO. "As a resource- and knowledge-center for cluster technologies, customers can have the peace-of-mind that Linux Networx can deliver a highly productive and reliable cluster system." Linux clustering is a method of linking multiple computers together to form a unified and more powerful system. The Linux Networx cluster system designed for Sandia will use 256 Intel(R) Xeon processors, the FabNet(TM) 12800 InfiniBand switch from Fabric Networks and Clusterworx(R) and ICE Box(TM) cluster management tools from Linux Networx. "The FabNet 12800 is the first terabit switch of its kind and we are very excited that Linux Networx is partnering with us to bring this Switched Computing technology to Sandia," said Alisa Nessler, Fabric Networks CEO. "Sandia will realize tremendous manageability, low-latency and CPU efficiency benefits from our technology in the Linux Networx high performance computing solution."