ClusterVision to Install First Supercomputer Cluster in Europe Based on Fabric Networks InfiniBand Technology.Business Editors/High-Tech Writers WESTBOROUGH, Mass. & AMSTERDAM, Netherlands--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 25, 2003 Scientists to Use InfiniBand High Performance Computing Technology to Study Global Warming, Quasars and Black Holes Fabric Networks(tm) Inc., the leader in Switched Fabric Networking technology, and ClusterVision, specialist in Linux supercomputer clusters, today announced the receipt of an order from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands for the installation of a 66 processor Linux supercomputer cluster using InfiniBand technology from Fabric Networks. This will be the first public, production-ready cluster in Europe based on InfiniBand technology. The cluster will be used by a varied group of scientists from two top research institutes of the University of Utrecht. Scientists from the Astronomical Institute will use the cluster for research concerning the evolution of stars and binary star constellations and their interaction with the interstellar medium. This will later be extended with Magneto magneto: see generator. magneto Permanent-magnet alternating generator used mainly to produce electrical current for the ignition system in various types of internal-combustion engines, such as aircraft, marine, tractor, and motorcycle engines. Hydrodynamic hy·dro·dy·nam·ic also hy·dro·dy·nam·i·cal adj. 1. Of or relating to hydrodynamics. 2. Of, relating to, or operated by the force of liquid in motion. problems associated with star atmospheres and more exotic phenomena like quasars and black holes. Scientists from the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric research Utrecht (IMAU IMAU Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht IMAU Islamic Medical Association of Uganda ) will use the cluster for the modeling of ocean currents such as the Gulfstream, flows in the atmosphere, the transport of chemical components such as ozone, the movement of sandbanks Sandbanks is a small piece of land on the edge of England jutting out over the mouth of Poole Harbour on the English Channel coast at Poole in Dorset, England. It contains one of the most highly awarded and popular beaches in Europe. in coastal areas and the behavior of ice caps and glaciers. In all these areas, a finer detail of representation of physical processes is becoming possible through the availability of the cluster. Prof. dr ir Henk Dijkstra, professor of Dynamical Oceanography oceanography, study of the seas and oceans. The major divisions of oceanography include the geological study of the ocean floor (see plate tectonics) and features; physical oceanography, which is concerned with the physical attributes of the ocean water, such as and director of IMAU, said: "We are very excited to be one of the first to use the new InfiniBand technology to boost the computing power available to the scientists at IMAU. We chose the combination of products and services from ClusterVision, Fabric Networks and Intel because of their track-record and proven expertise in High Performance Computing." The cluster will also be used by the High Performance Computing Group of the university. Dr Aad van der Steen, leader of the research group said: "We are very pleased with the new cluster because the very low latency and the extremely high bandwidth of InfiniBand allows us to study new application areas that traditionally were hard to tackle such as combinatorial and Data Mining problems in Bioinformatics." InfiniBand is a new network technology based on an open standard I/O architecture developed by a consortium of some of the world's largest computer companies, including Intel, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Microsoft See Microsoft and IBM. . InfiniBand has a bandwidth that is almost 10 times higher and a latency that is almost 10 times lower than that of traditional Gigabit Ethernet. It also reduces communications overhead by as much as 50% of server CPU CPU in full central processing unit Principal component of a digital computer, composed of a control unit, an instruction-decoding unit, and an arithmetic-logic unit. cycles. ClusterVision will supply the cluster with the MVAPICH parallel programming libraries. MVAPICH is an MPI MPI - Message Passing Interface implementation for InfiniBand developed by the research group of Prof. Dhabaleswar K. Panda, professor of Computer and Information Science at Ohio State University Ohio State University, main campus at Columbus; land-grant and state supported; coeducational; chartered 1870, opened 1873 as Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College, renamed 1878. There are also campuses at Lima, Mansfield, Marion, and Newark. in the USA. "We are using the Fabric Networks solution in our laboratory today and have achieved impressive results. Our testing with the MVAPICH package is showing latencies for MPI applications of 6.8 microseconds for small message sizes and bandwidths of over 850 MB/s for large messages," said professor Panda. The cluster will consist of 33 SuperMicro rack-mount servers with 66 Intel Xeon CPUs at 2.8 GHz and a total of 66 GB of memory. Each server will have a Fabric Networks HCA-X InfiniBand PCI-X (PCI eXtended) An enhanced PCI bus technology originally developed by IBM, HP and Compaq that is backward compatible with existing PCI cards. PCI and 32-bit PCI-X slots are physically the same, and PCI cards can plug into PCI-X slots. card connected to a Fabric Networks FabNet 3200 32-port InfiniBand switch. The cluster will be running the Linux-based ClusterVisionOS cluster operating system and software environment, which includes all software required to effectively use and manage the cluster. About InfiniBand Clusters InfiniBand clustering technology provides an alternative to traditional supercomputing by connecting multiple computers to form a unified and powerful computing system. The clusters are built from high-quality commodity computer components, Linux and other proven open source software technology. InfiniBand clusters can therefore match the performance and stability of traditional supercomputers for a fraction of the cost. About Fabric Networks Inc. Fabric Networks is the leading provider of Switched Fabric Networking solutions for Enterprise Data Center high availability computing and High-Performance Computing server clusters. Created from the strategic merger of InfiniSwitch and Lane15 Software, Fabric Networks offers a legacy of excellence in both switched fabric hardware and fabric management software. Fabric Networks is an IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) ServerProven Partner and an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) The rebranding of equipment and selling it. The term initially referred to the company that made the products (the "original" manufacturer), but eventually became widely used to refer to the organization that buys the products and partner with other leading server manufacturers. For more information visit www.fabricnetworks.com. About ClusterVision ClusterVision are specialists in the design, implementation and support of large-scale compute, storage and database clusters. The technical team at ClusterVision has designed, implemented and supported some of the largest and most complex compute and storage clusters in the UK and the Netherlands. Customers include Rutherford Appleton Laboratory The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) at the Chilton/Harwell Science Campus is a UK scientific research laboratory near Didcot in Oxfordshire. It has a staff of around 1,200 who support the work of over 10,000 scientists and engineers, mainly from the university research , Natural History Museum, Imperial College and Manchester University in the UK, and Delft Hydraulics, TNO TNO Tamarindo, Costa Rica (Airport code) TNO Nederlandse Organisatie voor Toegepast Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek TNO Trans-Neptunian Object TNO The New Order (paramilitary street gang) TNO Trust No One and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. ClusterVision has offices in Amsterdam and London. For high-resolution application pictures contact: press@clustervision.com. For high-resolution product pictures contact: pfriar@fabricnetworks.com. |
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