Cray Research and Interphase Corp. deliver record-setting ATM throughput performance; companies demonstrate parallel ATM connections, achieve nearly 400 million bits per second using multiple OC3 interfaces.

EAGAN, Minn. and DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 19, 1994--Cray Research and Interphase Corp. Monday announced industry-leading ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) performance of nearly 400 million bits per second (Mbps) on a Cray SuperServer 6400 (CS6400) using Interphase's 4615 SBus ATM adapters.

ATM is a high-speed transmission technology that allows data, voice and video transmissions over a single physical connection.

The companies said that the CS6400 system and Interphase ATM adapter solution sustained 382 Mbps (or 48 MBytes per second) throughput using the full TCP/IP protocol. Four Interphase 4615 OC3 Adapters were connected to the CS6400 system's I/O (Input/Output) bus.

"We are now able to offer our customers network performance that approaches the 400 Mbps speed barrier on ATM," explained Bobbi Hazard, vice president of Cray's Business Systems Division. "This is a significant achievement, especially given the software overhead typically associated with the full TCP/IP protocol."

"The Cray/Interphase combination enables customers to take advantage of the most powerful computers on the market and the fastest, high-capacity ATM adapters," said Ken Restivo, product marketing manager at Interphase.

"This union comes at an opportune time. High-capacity computing and transmission capabilities are essential to a number of markets such as telecommunications, financial services, interactive on-line shopping, video-on-demand, medical imaging for remote diagnosis, and a host of other complex applications."

According to Hazard, scalability of the Interphase 4615 adapter and the CS6400 I/O software was significant in making it possible to support multiple connections to the same system and concurrently transfer data across these multiple connections to exceed the performance goal targeted for this project.

"Our business depends on the ability of network devices to exploit the power of the CS6400 systems," Hazard said. "As the most powerful SPARC/Solaris-compliant system on the market today, the CS6400 server has the raw speed to handle far more than the 155 Mbps peak rate of OC3. We were searching for a way to access the CS6400 server with scalable networking performance, and the Interphase ATM adapters allowed us to achieve this goal."

Hazard noted that the CS6400 system provides aggregate I/O bandwidth of more than six gigabits per second -- leading the industry in I/O transaction volume ability, as well as large I/O transfers. "Based on the software engineering work completed for this project, the CS6400 system is expected to support up to 62 ATM connections," she said.

The CS6400, beginning at under $400,000 (list price U.S.) is offered with up to 64 SuperSPARC Plus microprocessors, up to 16 gigabytes of central memory and up to 7 terabytes of on-line storage. The system runs the Solaris operating environment, which, among other enhancements, has been parallelized for up to 64 processors.

The system's I/O architecture is based on 16 IEEE SBus I/O buses, all of which are equally accessible to all processors. Parallelized I/O drivers allow multiple I/O connections to be used for a single I/O transaction on certain devices.

The single-slot 4615 SBus Adapter, currently available from Interphase for SunOS 4.1.3 and Solaris 2.3 drivers, is priced at $1,495. The adapter enables SBus systems to accommodate bandwidth- intensive, isochronous and multiple information traffic in an enterprise networking environment over SONET 155 Mbps ATM.

The adapter is available with a 100 Mbps or 155 Mbps media module that can be easily exchanged with future 25 Mbps modules that allow organizations with mixed computing environments to have ATM connectivity without re-cabling. The 4615 leads the industry in switch compatibility that is proven compatible with ATM switches from several major vendors.

Cray Research Inc., based in Eagan, provides leading high- performance computing tools and services to help solve customers' most challenging problems.

The company's new Business Systems Division, announced earlier this month, combines the Cray Research Superservers Inc. subsidiary, with operations in Beaverton, Ore., and San Diego, as well as Cray/Savant Solutions, Dallas, a newly acquired group for commercial computing consulting and professional services.

The new division is aimed at bringing Cray Research solutions to the commercial marketplace for data warehousing, decision support, transaction processing and multimedia applications which challenge current technologies.

Interphase, based in Dallas, is a leading supplier of performance I/O products for high-speed networks. The company was recognized as the No. 1 seller of FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface) workstation interface cards in the U.S. and No. 2 worldwide (published 1993) by Dataquest Inc.

Interphase sells to computer OEMs, systems integrators, value added resellers and end users through a worldwide sales and service network.

CONTACT: Cray Research Inc., Eagan

              Mardi Larson, 612/683-3538
               or
              Interphase Corp., Dallas
              Alison Golan, 214/919-9120