Asante's IntraCore 8000 Powers ``Supercomputer for the Rest of Us''; Smoothly Connecting Machines in Avowed World's Fastest Mac-Based Cluster.

Business/Technology Editors

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 19, 2001

An Asante Technologies (NASDAQ: ASNT.OB) IntraCore(TM) 8000 switch has helped create the world's fastest Mac-based cluster for plasma particle research in Europe: epp. Researchers at Grupo de Lasers e Plasmas (GoLP) say the epp cluster is the first milestone of the GoLP simulation program in Extreme Plasma Physics. GoLP is located in the campus of Instituto Superior Tecnico (IST), Lisbon -- the leading engineering school in Portugal and in the top 10 engineering schools in Europe. The cluster is used for numerical simulation of plasmas, novel plasma particle acceleration schemes using ultra intense lasers, and relativistic shocks in astrophysics.

The Only Supercomputer Switch Designed for Sustained Growth

"When we started to plan our epp cluster, we were interested in a switch that could grow with it -- upgradeable to the maximum number of machines we planned, but still allowing us to move, at least partially, to a Gbit/s network," said Luis Silva, Assistant Professor of Physics at IST. "IntraCore 8000 provides these two features: it is upgradeable up to 48 ports at 100Mb/s, or 3 x 1 Gbit/s ports. Thus, we can invest in the networking infrastructure as the cluster `grows' without too much of an initial effort. The IntraCore 8000 was the only switch on the market that would allow for this sustained growth."

A co-creator of Project AppleSeed, the parallel processing system upon which the epp cluster is based, also praises the IC8000. "In one AppleSeed cluster installation, we had to return a Cisco switch because it did not work well with AppleTalk. Cisco's technical support staff was not familiar with Macs and could not help us set it up correctly," stated Viktor Decyk, Research Physicist and Adjunct Professor at UCLA. "Asante products always work well with Macs right out of the box."

This "supercomputer for the rest of us" was so-named because "we were getting about the same performance as the older Cray Y-MP supercomputers, yet ours could be assembled and run by novices," Decyk commented. Installation and setup of the epp cluster took less than one day.

Specifications of the epp cluster:

-- Over 50 GFlops of peak power

-- 16 Dual PowerPC G4/450, 32 processors

-- 12 Gigabytes of RAM

-- 0.5 Terabyte of hard disk space

-- Apple Mac OS 9

-- 100 Mb/s Fast Ethernet

-- 2 Moniswitch8 Pro USB KVM switches

-- F90 Absoft compiler

-- Asante IntraCore 8000 switch

Why Choose Asante?

"Our choice of the IntraCore 8000 was based on the fact that Asante was already strongly pushing for Gbit/s switches over copper, a technology we want to implement in future upgrades, since the machines in our cluster already have 1 Gbit network cards," Silva continued. "The IC8000 proved from the start to be extremely easy to set up and use. As soon as the machines in the cluster were connected to the switch, everything went smoothly -- even when we changed our local network and added a router/gateway based on OpenBSD."

Decyk concurred. "The fact that it's easy to use was important. Performance, even with software overhead, is very close to peak speed -- 95%. I never have to think about it; it just works." "The best thing about the IntraCore 8000 is that it has remained unnoticed since we turned it on, always delivering the performance we expect," added Silva.

Price and Availability

Asante's IntraCore 8000 and other products are available from Asante solution providers, e-commerce sites, systems integrators, and at www.asante.com.

About Asante

Asante Technologies, Inc., is a leading provider of network solutions for the education, enterprise, and service provider marketplaces. The company's IntraCore products support multi-service applications for large enterprises. Asante's FriendlyNET(R) products simplify networking and provide Internet access for mobile and office professionals. For additional information, visit www.asante.com or call 408/435-8401.

Note to Editors: Asante and FriendlyNET are registered trademarks; IntraCore is a trademark of Asante Technologies, Inc.