INTERCONNECTS

Foundry Networks announced that several network technology demonstrations powered by its BigIron(R) switches won awards in the fourth annual High-Performance Bandwidth Challenge, held in conjunction with SC2003, the international conference on high-performance computing and networking which occurred last week in Phoenix, AZ. The winning demonstrations using Foundry gear were designed by teams from the National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Tokyo. The SC2003 Bandwidth Challenge tasked some of the world's top computer scientists and researchers to move large amounts of data across networks, demonstrating emerging techniques and applications that consume enormous amounts of network resources. A team including Los Alamos National Laboratory achieved a new conference record for sustained throughput of 23.21 gigabits per second, earning the Sustained Bandwidth Award for its demonstration "Bandwidth Lust: Distributed Particle Physics Analysis Using Ultra-High Speed TCP on The Grid." In what judges called the "Moore's Law move over" award, the team demonstrated the best vision and articulation of the need for high performance networks to serve science. The team moved a total of 6551.134 gigabits of data, reaching 23.23 gigabits per second. Los Alamos National Laboratory used the BigIron 15000 switch for its portion of the demonstration, in tests designed to prove the versatility of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) networking technology and to demonstrate multi-gigabit end-to-end TCP/IP throughput. The University of Tokyo received the Distance x Bandwidth Product & Network Technology Award for its demonstration titled "Transmission Rate Controlled TCP on Data Reservoir" which achieved very high bandwidth utilization for extremely long-distance file transfer. The demonstration covered 24,000 km (15,000 miles) and achieved average pipe utilization of over 65 percent with real disk-to-disk transfer at a sustained rate of 7.56 Gigabits per second. The University of Tokyo connected 32 servers to Foundry's BigIron 8000 switch using Gigabit Ethernet and 10GbE connections between Phoenix and Japan. The Both Directions Award went to the team including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Sandia National Laboratories' for the "Distributed Lustre File System" which demonstrated very high data rate performance for local clustered file systems integrated with remote sites in the same name space. The demonstration featured a very high capacity clustered storage environment, providing 80Gbps local file system access and 10Gbps remote file system access across a 2000-mile wide area link. The team achieved a rate of 9.02 Gbits per second. The Lustre File System demonstration used Foundry's high-density, non-blocking 10 Gigabit Ethernet BigIron MG8 switch and the BigIron 15000 switch as its network backbone. "The Bandwidth Challenge is an outstanding example of international innovation and collaboration among computer scientists. We were delighted to provide technology and support to help make these demonstrations possible," said Bobby Johnson, Foundry's president and CEO. "The record performance achieved at SC2003 establishes that switched Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet is a viable, cost-effective solution for the most demanding, high-capacity computing environments, and that Foundry offers leading solutions for high performance computing."