INDUSTRY

First cluster deployment of extended-reach 40G optical active cable; provides the freedom to design an optimal network: Luxtera, the worldwide leader in Silicon CMOS Photonics, has announced that its 40 Gigabit Quad Data Rate (QDR) Optical Active Cable (OAC), Blazar, will provide connectivity for the SCinet InfiniBand network at the SC08 conference. Considered the most powerful network in the world, SCinet will run during the seven-day convention to support the advanced applications and network experiments that have become the trademark of the conference. This is the first QDR cluster deployment for the Blazar OAC. Blazar fulfills demands for high speed, reliability, and ability to design the network without the usual distance limitations of traditional copper or optical cables. Luxtera’s production version of Blazar includes integrated optical I/O, waveguides, splitters, modulators, photodetectors, and electronics on a single low cost Silicon CMOS die. Blazar is the only 40G OAC that supports high speed optical network deployments from 1 meter to 300 meters, providing the freedom to design optimal networks, regardless of space and layout limitations. Utilizing Silicon CMOS Photonics, Blazar offers a better alternative to legacy optical and copper connectivity between network systems and ultimately improves performance while reducing capital and maintenance costs. The company is now accepting production orders for Blazar. “At SC08, we offer exhibitors and attendees the world’s fastest network capabilities in support of their high performance demonstrations,” said Patrick Dorn, senior network engineer at NCSA and chair of the SCinet committee. “Luxtera's Blazar cables meet our requirements for a high speed, highly reliable backbone and offer the flexibility of extended reach for exhibitors using our innovative InfiniBand network.” “Today's multi-core, multi-socket servers require 40Gb/s InfiniBand to remove the I/O bottleneck and accelerate clustering productivity,” said Sash Sunkara, vice president of marketing for Mellanox Technologies. “With its increased reach of up to 300 meters, Luxtera’s Blazar cables can facilitate the deployment of multi-thousand node clusters and bring InfiniBand to the desktop in departmental environments.” “SCinet is the fastest network in the world showcasing the latest, most advanced high performance technologies. SCinet trusting the backbone of its showcase network to Luxtera demonstrates that our products are ready for volume deployments,” said Greg Young, president and CEO of Luxtera. “Blazar is breaking the High Performance Computing industry’s preconceived notions about trading off speed, cost, and interconnect distance. Network designers can now have it all.”