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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Systems/Enterprise:
IBM, TOPSPIN COMMUNICATIONS FORGE
KEY InfiniBand AGREEMENT
IBM and Topspin Communications announced a multi-year agreement to
integrate
advanced Topspin InfiniBand switch technology on IBM systems, and resell
Topspin InfiniBand switches to customers worldwide. The five-year agreement
gives IBM access to current and future versions of Topspin's industry-leading
server switches and software for use across the IBM eServer and TotalStorage
product line.
InfiniBand is a server interconnect and I/O technology designed to address
the
needs of computing platforms for increased performance, higher scalability and
improved manageability. As an open industry standard, InfiniBand is capable of
remaking mainstream business computing by unleashing these capabilities and
delivering on the promise of a single, unifying I/O fabric for the data
center.
"With this announcement, IBM has placed a major stake in the ground in its
commitment to InfiniBand," said Mark Shearer, vice president of marketing and
strategy at IBM Systems Group. "As the only industry-standard interconnect
today with scalability up to 30 Gigabits per second, and remote direct memory
access (RDMA), we are convinced that this technology will dramatically improve
and simplify the way servers communicate. Working with Topspin, our plan is to
make InfiniBand a base technology for all IBM eServer systems and storage, and
the underlying fabric for future initiatives around on-demand computing."
A number of joint IBM and Topspin customers are already benefiting from the
relationship, including MCNC Grid Computing & Networking Services -- a
private, non-profit corporation established in 1980 to advance technology-led
economic development and job creation throughout North Carolina. MCNC Grid
Computing & Networking Services delivers advanced communications resources
through a statewide network for research and education.
"MCNC is very pleased to be working with Topspin and IBM in building out
our
64-node cluster. Our initial performance data indicates significant
improvement using Topspin's Server Switch, much faster than Gig-E and most
proprietary interconnects. Especially key is the low latency and high
bandwidth that the solution delivers. We look forward to working with Topspin
and IBM on future deployments at MCNC," said Steve Woods, principal systems
analyst with MCNC Grid Computing & Networking services.
Under terms of the agreement, IBM has the right to resell Topspin's current
and future generation 4X (10Gbps) and 12X (30Gbps) Server Switch portfolio for
the high-performance computing and database clustering markets for use with
IBM eServer pSeries, zSeries, iSeries and xSeries systems.
Topspin products are currently completing IBM Server Proven certification
and
have already been IBM TotalStorage Proven and validated for sale with IBM DB2
Universal Database on xSeries servers.
Combined IBM and Topspin solutions will be on display Jan. 21-23 in both
the
IBM booth (#523) and Topspin booth (#639) at LinuxWorld in New York City.
"Our customers are seeing immediate and compelling benefits from our server
switch products today," said Krish Ramakrishnan, CEO of Topspin. "By
establishing this relationship with IBM, an even wider range of enterprises
will be able to profit from our solutions in their scale-out, blade server and
on-demand computing initiatives."
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