Voltaire Unified Fabric Powers HLRN Supercomputer
Combination of 20 Gigabit InfiniBand Switching and 10 Gigabit Ethernet Connectivity Delivers Superior Performance to Large-Scale Supercomputer
BILLERICA, Mass. & HERZLIYA, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Voltaire Ltd. (NASDAQ: VOLT), a leading provider of grid backbone solutions for data centers, today announced that the North German Supercomputing Alliance (HLRN, www.hlrn.de) has implemented a Voltaire unified fabric for InfiniBand, Ethernet and storage consisting of switches, gateways and software as part of an SGI® Altix® supercomputer. Known as HLRN-II, the new system is 13 times more powerful than HLRN’s previous supercomputing resource.
“By selecting a unified fabric from Voltaire that leverages both 20 Gigabits/second InfiniBand and 10 Gigabit Ethernet in a single switching platform, HLRN gains improved performance and efficiency for their new supercomputer.”
The supercomputer system, which ranks at numbers 71 and 72 on the June 2008 TOP500 list, will significantly strengthen the competitive position of North German advanced research in diverse fields including environmental and climatic research, geological, coastal and oceanic research, the biological sciences, shipbuilding, quantum chemistry, and the engineering sciences.
The supercomputer system is shared between two German HPC sites located 155 miles apart – the Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik in Berlin (ZIB) and the Regionales Rechenzentrum für Niedersachsen in Hannover (RRZN). The two system complexes in Hannover and Berlin are closely integrated and interconnected to create a unified overall system (one-system characteristic).
“The HLRN-II represents a tremendous advance for advanced research in northern Germany,” said Professor Alexander Reinefeld at the North German Supercomputing Alliance (HLRN). “The InfiniBand fabric from Voltaire plays an important role in this supercomputer because it gives us leading-edge inter-processor and I/O performance and enables the system to scale.”
“The Voltaire switches enabled us to build a unified fabric using InfiniBand to connect the servers while using their 10 Gigabit Ethernet gateways to bridge together the sites at Berlin and Hannover in a seamless and high-performance manner,” added Prof. Gabriele von Voigt at RRZN.
The installation features a total of 5,824 Intel® Xeon® processor cores and consists of twin SGI® Altix® ICE systems and SGI® Altix® XE 1200 cluster systems connected by 4 Voltaire Grid Director™ 2012 switches and 6 Voltaire Grid Director™ 2004 switches. The switches each offer 288 and 96 ports respectively of 20 Gigabits/second InfiniBand bandwidth and very low latency. Eight of the switches include a Voltaire 10 Gigabit Ethernet line board to seamlessly bridge the 10 Gigabit Ethernet link used for communication and data transfer between the sites in Berlin and Hannover. Overall, the HLRN installation provides more than 15.8 Terabytes (TB) of main memory and 1.15 Petabytes of SGI® InfiniteStorage storage capacity.
“HLRN can look forward to important advancements in scientific and engineering research using the SGI system with a Voltaire unified fabric,” said Asaf Somekh, vice president of strategic alliances, Voltaire. “By selecting a unified fabric from Voltaire that leverages both 20 Gigabits/second InfiniBand and 10 Gigabit Ethernet in a single switching platform, HLRN gains improved performance and efficiency for their new supercomputer.”
About Voltaire
Voltaire Ltd. (NASDAQ: VOLT) designs and develops server and storage switching and software solutions that enable high-performance grid computing within the data center. Voltaire refers to its server and storage switching and software solutions as the Voltaire Grid Backbone™. Voltaire’s products leverage InfiniBand technology and include director-class switches, multi-service switches, fixed-port configuration switches, Ethernet and Fibre Channel routers and standards-based driver and management software. Voltaire’s solutions have been sold to a wide range of end customers including governmental, research and educational organizations, as well as enterprises in the manufacturing, oil and gas, entertainment, life sciences and financial services industries.
Founded in 1997, Voltaire Ltd. is headquartered in Herzliya, Israel, and has its U.S. headquarters in Billerica, Massachusetts. More information about Voltaire is available at www.voltaire.com or by calling 1-800-865-8247.
Forward Looking Statements
Information provided in this press release may contain statements relating to current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about future events that are "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements generally relate to the Voltaire's plans, objectives and expectations for future operations and are based upon management's current estimates and projections of future results or trends. Actual future results may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties. These factors include, but are not limited to, those discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in Voltaire’s annual report on Form 20-F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 5, 2008. These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date hereof, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
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