Systems/Enterprise:
QUADRICS DELIVERS INTERCONNECTS FOR GRID
CLUSTERS
Quadrics announced its partnership with The
Pennsylvania State University in
building its latest high-performance
computing grid cluster, Lion-XL, to
further the research computing endeavors
of scholars from a variety of
departments and disciplines.
The new
Lion-XL cluster consists of a total 176 Dell PowerEdge 2650 servers,
each
configured with dual Intel Xeon processors, 4 GigaBytes of memory and a
36GigaBytes Ultra3 15K rpm SCSI drive. All of the Lion-XL nodes run RedHat's
Linux operating system.
The first subset of Lion-XL, 128 dual 2.4 GHz
cpu nodes, are connected with
Quadrics QsNet high-performance network. The
remaining 48 nodes, with dual 2.8
GHz cpus, are connected with gigabit
ethernet.
Penn State has become the latest customer to select Quadrics
as a way to gain
high-performance computing at an affordable price. Using
Quadrics' QsNet high
bandwidth, low latency interconnect, Penn State has built
Lion-XL, a nearly
1.0 Teraflop machine, with standard components that offer
the computation
speeds comparable to specialized, and much more expensive,
high-performance
computers.
Quadrics is using these grid clusters to
gain further endorsement of its QsNet
products (which have, and still are,
used in proprietary grid cluster SMP
systems) as the leading high-performance
network supplier for commodity based
grid clusters as well. Investment in
commodity based Supercluster systems as
opposed to traditional supercomputers
can significantly reduce the overall
cost of ownership for an
organization.
Penn State's Vijay Agarwala, director of graduate
education and research
services, said that "Quadrics is a leading vendor of
high-speed interconnect
technology, a crucial element in building scalable and
well-balanced
computational cluster."
"Instead of researchers
deploying small clusters in their offices.it's far
more productive to build
larger machines," Agarwala said. "Larger machines,
when properly run,
significantly lower the cost of ownership."
"Working with leading
organizations like Penn State will provide Quadrics
valuable feedback on the
optimization of Quadrics cluster operation for
academia and provide
opportunities for similar organizations to gain insight
into the benefits of
the Quadrics environment", said Drazen Stilinovic,
General Manager of Quadrics
Limited. "We look forward to continuing
collaboration with Penn State in the
future".
Quadrics QsNet Products
Quadrics' scalable, high
performance solutions combine the industry-leading
QsNet interconnect with
standard microprocessor and operating system
platforms. QsNet enables large
clusters of these processing units to be
connected together. With extremely
high bandwidth and ultra-low latency, it is
a crucial component for building
scalable systems.
Quadrics QsNet is now supported on a range of
microprocessor platforms under
Linux consisting of Intelâ Xeonâ and Itanium2â,
HP Alphaâ and AMD Athlonâ
together with Quadrics' customized implementations
with HP Tru64â Unix for the
HP AlphaServerâ SC. QsNet performance, for the
Dell Xeon nodes ranges from 1.8
us latency to over 320 Mbytes/sec
bandwidth.
Combining multiple QsNet host adaptors, Quadrics can also
provide even more
bandwidth if needed. The Quadrics next generation network,
QsNet 2, based on
PCI-X and available in 2003, will maintain Quadrics'
technology leadership in
high-performance interconnect in this arena.
Performance alone, however, is only part of the picture. Quadrics' unique
solution lies in combining the performance of QsNet with a software
environment to ensure that clusters spanning thousands of processors can be
used, administered and run effectively. This combination provides the critical
production capability for cluster-driven computing.
About
Quadrics
Quadrics is a leading supplier and developer of high
performance networking
products and resource management software. QsNet
product families are based on
internally developed ASICs, firmware and
software technologies, and offer
customers high performance, scalability and
flexibility.
As a critical technology component, creating the right
partnerships is the key
to delivering success as the combination of
best-of-breed products and
services will provide the most cost-effective
solution. Quadrics' products
have been selected by the world's leading vendors
and integrators, as well as
major Supercomputing Centres such as Lawrence
Livermore and Los Alamos
National Laboratories, Pittsburgh Supercomputer
Centre and Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory.
In addition Quadrics
software products are fully integrated with Platform Inc.
Load Sharing
Facility Etnus Inc, TotalView Debugger and Pallas' VAMPIR and
VAMPIRTRACE
performance analysis tools.
Quadrics corporate headquarters are
located in Bristol, UK.
http://www.quadrics.com
Quadrics
also recently announced its involvement in the fastest Linux cluster
in the
world at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
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