SCIENCE

The HPC Advisory Council announced it will showcase the world's first FDR 56Gb/s InfiniBand during the ISC'11 conference in Hamburg, Germany from June 20-22. The demonstration is part of the HPC Advisory Council activities of hosting and organizing new technology demonstrations at leading HPC conferences that demonstrate new solutions which will influence future HPC systems in term of performance, scalability and utilization. The 56Gb/s InfiniBand demonstration will connect participating exhibitors on the ISC'11 showroom floor as part of the HPC Advisory Council ISCnet network. The ISCnet network provides organizations with fast interconnect connectivity between their booths on the show floor to demonstrate various HPC applications, and new developments and products.

The FDR InfiniBand network will include dedicated and distributed clusters as well as a Lustre-based storage system. Multiple applications will be demonstrated, including high-speed visualizations. The following HPC Council member organizations have contributed and are participating in the world's first FDR 56Gb/s InfiniBand ISCnet demonstration: AMD, Corning Cable Systems, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, HPC Advisory Council, MEGWARE, Mellanox Technologies, Microsoft, OFS, Scalable Graphics, Supermicro and Xyratex.

"The HPC Advisory Council is committed to furthering HPC outreach and enhancing education through various activities such as demonstrations that showcase the next generation of HPC technologies and usage," said Gilad Shainer, HPC Advisory Council Chairman. "The Council, in collaboration with the ISC organizers, is very pleased to demonstrate the world's first FDR 56Gb/s InfiniBand technology across the exhibition floor."

"Having new technologies such as FDR 56Gb/s InfiniBand debut at ISC'11 is a true testament to the cutting-edge technology that is presented each year at our internal event," said Dr. Hans Meuer, ISC General Chair and Managing Director of Prometeus GmbH. "We applaud the HPC Advisory Council's commitment and effort on delivering exciting and new high-performance demonstrations each year at ISC that showcase the possibilities of new and emerging technologies."

"We are excited to be working with the HPC Advisory Council on the world's first demonstration of the FDR 56Gb/s InfiniBand to showcase the emerging technologies that are providing the fast bandwidth needed for improved infrastructure performance and throughput," said Patricia Harrell, Director, HPC and Firestream, AMD. "By using AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors and AMD FirePro graphics, the FDR 56Gb/s InfiniBand can support the demands of processing greater amounts of data in real-time for high performance, grid and cloud computing environments that require higher speed interconnects."

"Scalable Graphics, as a member of the Council, is proud to provide the content for the FRD 56Gb/s InfiniBand ISCnet demonstration," said Christophe Mion, Chief Technical Officer at Scalable Graphics. "Indeed, the new FDR InfiniBand is a step further for our Direct Transport Compositor image compositing software to handle higher resolution 3D images. We can now address the new 4K and above projectors from the Virtual Reality and Digital Cinema industries, with an image quality and a high refresh rate never seen before."

"Supermicro is pleased to take part in the world's first FDR 56Gb/s InfiniBand demonstration organized by the HPC Advisory Council by hosting a Mellanox 56Gb/s switch at ISC'11," said Dr. Tau Leng, GM of HPC Solutions at Super Micro Computer, Inc. "Our close collaboration with the HPC Advisory Council and its member organization enables us to rapidly integrate Mellanox FDR 56Gb/s and future InfiniBand specifications into our evolving server platforms. Our InfiniBand enhanced HPC solutions provide HPC communities with the latest in advanced interconnect technology and peak levels of performance and efficiency."

"Xyratex is extremely pleased to contribute and support the HPC Advisory Council in demonstrating this important milestone in InfiniBand technology at ISC'11," said Michael K. Connolly, Partner and Alliances Development Manager for Xyratex Networked Storage Solutions. "With our recent introduction of the ClusterStor 3000, Xyratex has made a significant investment in the HPC market and InfiniBand technology. Our products and competencies mirror the core features of InfiniBand including high throughput, failover, quality of service, and scalability. Xyratex recognizes the long-term importance of InfiniBand to the HPC and Enterprise community with our continued development roadmaps embracing the technology."