Mellanox Technologies has announced that INRIA (The National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control), a public science and technology research institute, is using Mellanox InfiniBand adapters, switches and cables to connect the LORIA (Laboratoire Lorrain de Recherche en Informatique et ses Applications) / Nancy-Université supercomputing ‘Graphene’ cluster within the Grid’5000. The Grid’5000 is part of France’s research effort for developing a large scale nation-wide infrastructure for large-scale parallel and distributed computing research.

“The specific features of the cluster, e.g. the large number of identical low-power nodes connected to a non-blocking Mellanox-based InfiniBand network, enable new scalability experiments that were not previously possible,” said Lucas Nussbaum, Assistant professor at LORIA / Nancy-Université. “The cluster helps us run current jobs involving big data and also lets us benchmark future requirements – InfiniBand from Mellanox has been key to achieving the performance that supports our present and future needs.”

“We are pleased to support France and INRIA’s nation-wide requirements for scalable and high-performance computing research with Mellanox’s leading InfiniBand solutions,” said Gilad Shainer, senior director of HPC and technical computing at Mellanox Technologies. “Mellanox’s solutions offer superior performance, efficiency and productivity to deliver maximum return on investment for these systems.”

INRIA is a public science and technology institution under the supervision of the French Ministries of Research and Industry. It consists of eight regional research centers and employs 3,300 researchers across more than 170 project teams, most of which collaborate with other organizations, universities and higher education institutions. INRIA has 4,200 employees in France, and 80 associate teams around the world. The institution has played a key role in setting up nearly one hundred companies since 1984. French HPC provider Carri Systems designed the chassis according to INRIA’s needs and to help meet their performance requirements.