RETAIL

Silicon Graphics and Voltaire today announced at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, (Booth 381) that University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute has selected SGI Altix 350 with Voltaire industry-leading interconnect solutions for its mid-range technical computing system. The university selected SGI Altix 350 server nodes and Voltaire ISR 9024 InfiniBand switch routers to build 64-bit scalable Linux OS-based clusters. University of Minnesota is among the growing number of advanced computing centers that are replacing proprietary mid-range systems with high-performance Linux clusters. For technical users seeking supercomputing-class capabilities in the industry's most cost-effective, scalable platform, the Altix 350 system with Infiniband offers leading price/performance along with "expand on demand" flexibility in an industry-standard architecture. Altix 350 systems can scale up to 16 Intel® Itanium® 2 processors per node, providing superior performance and throughput for demanding HPC workloads. Leveraging Voltaire's high performance InfiniBand-based interconnect solutions as the cluster interconnect, Altix 350 clusters are designed to scale out to thousands of Itanium2 processors, while simplifying the creation of hybrid cluster environments that enhance existing 32-bit server clusters with 64-bit servers. "We're delighted that University of Minnesota recognizes the powerful combination of SGI's scalable Altix 350 server and InfiniBand interconnect solutions from Voltaire," said Jeff Greenwald, senior director, Server Product Marketing and Management, SGI. "Scaling out in high-performance computing environments requires extremely high I/O rates, which presents particular difficulties to many clustering environments. The InfiniBand solution for Altix 350 addresses that bottleneck and provides technical customers with a world-class clustering solution for their most demanding application workloads." In its effort to cost-effectively acquire a supercomputing-class, shared memory computing solution, the University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute purchased eight, 16-processor Altix 350 mid-range systems, each with 32GB of memory. The Altix 350 systems will form a high-performance cluster via Voltaire's grid interconnect solution for SGI Altix 350. Running a full slate of supercomputing applications, the Altix systems will be integrated via a SAN and SGI® InfiniteStorage Shared Filesystem CXFS(TM). The SAN will integrate the Altix cluster with 3TB of storage located on a previously installed SGI® InfiniteStorage TP9400 storage array. The new 128-processor Altix 350 cluster adds significant computing power to the Supercomputing Institute's existing 48-processor and four-processor Altix 3000 systems. University of Minnesota selected the Voltaire ISR 9024 for the cluster interconnect in lieu of proprietary interconnect technologies. With twenty-four, 10 Gbps ports in a 1U chassis, the standards-based InfiniBand switch is designed for high availability and easy maintenance. Using the Voltaire ISR 9024, customers can build InfiniBand fabrics that scale from a few to several hundreds of nodes. "Universities and advanced computing facilities around the globe are deploying Voltaire's grid interconnect solutions because of the price/performance, increased scalability and I/O throughput they bring to clusters," said Arun Jain, vice president of marketing, Voltaire. "We look forward to continuing our close alliance with SGI which enables us to offer integrated cluster solutions that deliver the true value of InfiniBand: SMP class performance at an affordable price."