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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Breaking News -
Networking:
Mellanox Delivers Third Gen.
InfiniBand HCA With PCI Express
Mellanox Technologies Ltd, a leader in InfiniBand solutions, introduced its
third generation InfiniBand Host Channel Adapter (HCA) and announced shipments
to OEM customers. The InfiniHost III Ex features an 8X PCI Express interface
that delivers 32 and 64-bit InfiniBand capabilities for PCI Express based
servers. The InfiniHost III Ex includes dual 10Gb/s InfiniBand ports that
deliver unmatched throughput and extremely low latencies in a low power single
chip implementation. In addition to the semiconductor device, Mellanox is
shipping a low profile InfiniHost III Ex HCA PCI Express add-in adapter
card.
"InfiniBand adoption continues at a very rapid rate. The introduction of
the
InfiniHost III Ex complements our existing third generation switching device,
the InfiniScale III," said Eyal Waldman, chairman and CEO of Mellanox
Technologies LTD. "The new InfiniHost adapter features advanced capabilities
that have been developed based upon extensive feedback from customers that
manage data centers and high performance clusters. These improvements advance
the performance, maturity, scalability and reliability of applications, like
Oracle and DB2, running on InfiniBand clustered servers and storage."
InfiniHost and 8X PCI Express server platforms enable an aggregate of 20
Gb/sec of I/O bandwidth. PCI Express greatly improves upon the 8Gb/s bandwidth
that PCI-X slots provide and at the same time improves latencies. Bandwidth
and latency are critical attributes for clustered database, high performance
computing (HPC), embedded, and storage applications that take advantage of
InfiniBand's Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) capabilities.
"PCI Express and InfiniBand are a perfect marriage of technologies for data
center computing. Combined they enable an unprecedented 20Gb/sec bandwidth
from Intel Architecture-based processors to server and storage systems on an
InfiniBand fabric," said Jim Pappas, director of initiative marketing for
Intel's Enterprise Platform Group. "We have been working closely with Mellanox
on their design and verification of PCI Express-enabled InfiniHost III Ex
products to help ensure interoperability with Intel Architecture-based server
chipsets and platforms."
The InfiniHost III Ex is the 3rd Generation InfiniBand HCA from Mellanox
that
offers full backwards software compatibility with the existing InfiniHost HCA,
thus allowing the existing software base, including tools, protocols and
applications to run over the InfiniHost III Ex unchanged. Feature enhancements
include improved caching, pre-fetching, enhanced I/O operations, additional
CPU off-load capabilities and other features that transparently improve
application speed.
The InfiniHost III Ex is ideal for blade designs. The device features a
small
27 x 27mm package, and a single chip design including the integration of the
SERDES physical layer. Utilizing TSMC's state of the art 130 nanometer silicon
fabrication process allows the core to run at a higher clock rate and achieve
a low power requirement of only ~5 Watts.
"As a systems leader and an active participant in the InfiniBand Trade
Association, Sun works with best-in-class InfiniBand technology providers such
as Mellanox to develop InfiniBand-based hardware and software," said Subodh
Bapat, vice president and chief technologist of Volume Systems Products for
Sun Microsystems Inc. "With its improved support for bandwidth and lower
latencies, the InfiniBand architecture and PCI Express have the potential to
offer tremendous performance benefits to InfiniBand-based blade servers."
The InfiniHost III Ex HCA PCI Express add-in card expands the Mellanox
family
of HCA adapter cards. The card is a full 8X PCI Express card providing 20
Gb/sec of raw bandwidth compatible with the latest PCI Express 1.0a
specification, including the ability to auto-negotiate. The card features
various memory configurations including 128MB, 256MB and 512MB.
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