Scientific
Applications:
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
grid cluster
in the world at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
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