PROCESSORS

Terrascale Technologies, an innovative developer of latest generation input/output (I/O) software, today announced that the TerraGrid(TM) scalable I/O platform will be publicly demonstrated for the first time at SC2003 in Phoenix, Arizona, from November 17th to 20th. Demonstrations will be held throughout the conference at two locations: RackSaver (booth 2319) and Abba Technologies (booth 734). The computer industry is undergoing a fundamental transition. Clusters of hundreds of low-cost computers are replacing traditional monolithic systems that run data intensive applications. However, there is a major gap between the performance increase on the hardware front and the software technology required to efficiently run these new infrastructures. Leveraging the iSCSI protocol, TerraGrid(TM) unifies data space and liberates I/O bandwidth to extract maximum value from clusters. TerraGrid(TM) redefines I/O system capabilities with previously unseen speed - 100s of Gigabytes/second, linear scalability - to 10,000s of nodes, extreme fault-tolerance and seamless integration with existing infrastructures. End-users deploying TerraGrid(TM) are rapidly able to move the large suite of existing Open Source Linux data management utilities (including file systems) from serial operation to parallel operation, with minimal configuration changes. TerraGrid(TM) has already been privately demonstrated to select industry experts. Executives at Novipro, an information technology consulting firm and one of Canada's leading IBM Premier Partners, were among the first industry insiders to witness the TerraGrid(TM) platform's capabilities first hand: "We were very impressed with TerraGrid(TM)" said Yves Paquette, President and General Manager, Novipro. "The prototype transfers data at more than 9,600 Mbits/sec (1,200 Mbytes/sec) from just ten commodity servers connected to a Gigabit Ethernet switch. Actual client deployments will be much faster. This is even more impressive when you consider that these deployments will cost a fraction of the price of competitors' traditional solutions that have substantially lower capabilities and utilize proprietary hardware." Mr. Paquette concluded. "I can't believe the performance Terrascale is getting from using simple Intel-based servers running standard software," said Arun Taneja, Founder and Consulting Analyst, Taneja Group. "The implications of this solution are huge. I would consider this a paradigm shifting platform, assuming the performance is ratified at a few more customer sites," Mr. Taneja added. "TerraGrid(TM) will set an entirely new industry benchmark in performance and TCO. The I/O bandwidth and the potential for scalability are off the chart in terms of conventional expectations. In addition to its performance, the cost-efficiency and ease-of-deployment will further drive the market proliferation of TerraGrid(TM)," said Gautham Sastri, President and CEO, Terrascale Technologies. "SC2003 is a turning point for us - the first public demonstration of our TerraGrid(TM) platform. We are confident that our innovative technology will revolutionize distributed computing and truly unleash the power of compute clusters." Mr. Sastri added.