Colfax International Announces Cluster Based On AMD Opteron(TM) Processors, Mellanox InfiniBand, and Windows Compute Cluster Server.World-class price/performance certified for Wolfram Research Wolfram Research is an international company that summarizes its aim as "Pushing the Envelope of Technical Computing". The main product of Wolfram Research is Mathematica, an environment for technical computing. gridMathematica 2 SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Colfax International, a global supplier of fully-customizable, high-performance workstations, servers, clusters, and storage solutions, today announced availability of the CX950, the world's first cluster that unites the power of the AMD (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, www.amd.com) A major manufacturer of semiconductor devices including x86-compatible CPUs, embedded processors, flash memories, programmable logic devices and networking chips. Opteron[TM] 2000 Series processors, Mellanox InfiniBand, and Wolfram wolfram: see tungsten. gridMathematica 2 under Microsoft Windows See Windows. (operating system) Microsoft Windows - Microsoft's proprietary window system and user interface software released in 1985 to run on top of MS-DOS. Widely criticised for being too slow (hence "Windoze", "Microsloth Windows") on the machines available then. Compute Cluster Server See Microsoft Cluster Server. 2003. Designed as a turnkey solution for the most compute-intensive applications in financial services, energy, engineering, research, and other markets, the CX950 offers significant price/performance advantages for many high-performance workloads and is already certified for use with Wolfram Research's gridMathematica 2, with other vendor certifications pending. "Many enterprises in financial services and other industries are most comfortable with Windows technology, but until now, they have had to settle for limited performance for their compute-intensive needs," said Gautam Shah, president and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of Colfax International. "The CX950 offers world-class performance, scalability, and cost-effectiveness in a Windows-based cluster." Colfax chose gridMathematica 2 as an integral component of the solution because its strength, flexibility and power have made it an international standard for cluster-based, compute-intensive tasks. "gridMathematica 2 brings the full potential of 64-bit parallel computing clusters and grids to the world's most demanding applications in research centers and Fortune 1000 companies," said Roger Germundsson, director of research and development at Wolfram Research. "Now, the CX950 makes gridMathematica 2 available to a whole new segment of the HPC (Handheld PC) A palmtop computer that weighs less than one pound and runs specialized versions of popular applications. Microsoft coined the term for its Windows CE operating system, which is an abbreviated version of Windows. See Pocket PC. community, including individuals and workgroups in financial services, biotechnology, engineering, and related fields." The CX950 cluster offers outstanding compute performance through a choice of any AMD Opteron 2000 Series processor, with DDR (Double Data Rate) Refers to an SDRAM memory chip that increases performance by doubling the effective data rate of the frontside bus. For more details, see SDRAM. DDR - Double Data Rate Random Access Memory 2. It is also designed to support drop-in upgrades to the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor when it becomes available. "We commend Colfax International on its approach to high-performance computing solutions," said Randy Allen, corporate vice president, Server and Workstation Division, AMD (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :AMD). "We expect that combining the processing power of AMD Opteron processors and Windows CCS (1) (Common Channel Signaling) A communications system in which one channel is used for signaling and different channels are used for voice/data transmission. Signaling System 7 (SS7) is a CCS system, also known as CCS7. See SS7. with a low-latency, high-speed InfiniBand interconnect will drive high-performance computing to the individual and workgroup levels." Based on 1RU nodes, the cluster can be delivered with 4, 8, 16, or 32 nodes or other configurations to meet specific customer needs. The system supports up to 32GB of DDR2 667MHz (MegaHertZ) One million cycles per second. It is used to measure the transmission speed of electronic devices, including channels, buses and the computer's internal clock. A one-megahertz clock (1 MHz) means some number of bits (16, 32, 64, etc. memory, and offers optimized I/O (Input/Output) The transfer of data between the CPU and a peripheral device. Every transfer is an output from one device and an input to another. See PC input/output. I/O - Input/Output through Mellanox PCI-Express-based InfiniBand ports. As with all other Colfax products, the CX950 cluster can be fully customized, offering buyers a choice of processors, memory and storage, and I/O configurations in a variety of cabinets and rack-mount enclosures to meet specific needs. "High-performance clusters, which were once confined to technology islands run by specialists, are becoming as readily available to engineers and scientists as their technical workstations," said Shawn Hansen, director of HPC marketing, Windows Server Division at Microsoft Corp. "Microsoft is working with key partners like AMD, Colfax, and Mellanox to help make HPC technology more mainstream by delivering turnkey solutions that enable the ability to focus more on science and less on IT." Mellanox's high-speed InfiniBand adapters provide remote direct memory access (RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) A communications protocol that provides transmission of data from the memory of one computer to the memory of another without involving the CPU. InfiniBand, Virtual Interface (VI) and RDMA Over IP are all forms of RDMA. ), low 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. overhead, low latency, and world-class bandwidth. Mellanox InfiniBand was designed to provide unparalleled cluster efficiency for reducing application run time and enabling more jobs to be executed at a given time. "InfiniBand is increasingly becoming the interconnect of choice for the world's most demanding cluster computing sites and is currently used in several multi-thousand node clusters worldwide," said Gilad Shainer, senior technical marketing manager at Mellanox Technologies. "Mellanox InfiniBand adapters eliminate any concerns about I/O bottlenecks in advanced systems such as the CX950." Colfax will demonstrate the system with gridMathematica 2 at the London Mathematica HPC Conference on January 31. For more details about the conference, go to: http://www.wolfram.com/services/seminars/london2007. About Colfax International Colfax International is a global provider of customized workstations, servers, clusters and storage solutions that address the needs of today's most demanding users, all of whom want cost-effective solutions engineered for high performance, reliability, and ease of deployment. Colfax International combines unparalleled experience in hardware and software architecture with an unwavering commitment to customer service to deliver solutions that meet or exceed the unique needs of each customer. Founded in 1987, Colfax International is based in Sunnyvale, California and is privately held. For more information, please visit www.colfaxinternational.com. Related Websites AMD - www.amd.com/opteron Mellanox - www.mellanox.com Microsoft - www.microsoft.com/hpc Wolfram Research - www.wolfram.com/products/gridmathematica2 AMD, the AMD Arrow logo and combinations thereof, and AMD Opteron are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners. |
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