Paceline Systems Unveils Intelligent InfiniBand Switching Solutions and Enters Beta Test With Key Enterprise and High Performance Computing Customers.

Business/Technology Editors

SC2002

BALTIMORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 18, 2002

Solutions Aggressively Priced at Less Than $1,000 Per Port; Company

Announces New Customer Trials Including a Fortune 500 Enterprise and

the University of Washington

Paceline Systems Corporation, the leader in intelligent, enterprise-class InfiniBand(TM) fabric solutions, today announced details of the Paceline intelligent InfiniBand switch (the Paceline 4100), priced aggressively at less than $1,000 per port. The company additionally unveiled new beta sites, including the University of Washington and a Fortune 500 enterprise. They join previously announced customer Sandia National Laboratories.

To enable organizations to trial InfiniBand quickly and easily, Paceline introduced a "plug-and-play" Application Starter Kit for the High Performance Computing (HPC) market. (See also: Paceline Systems Announces High Performance Computing InfiniBand Application Starter Kit)

An eight port, 4x intelligent InfiniBand switch, the Paceline 4100 provides 160 Gbps non-blocking bandwidth in a compact 1U form factor. The 4100 enables organizations to rapidly realize the groundbreaking performance advantages of InfiniBand, coupled with the industry-leading manageability, scalability and reliability of Paceline's embedded Apex fabric management software. At less than $1,000 per intelligent switch port, the 4100 provides 8 times higher performance than Gigabit Ethernet, at a price point that falls below the cost of Fibre Channel switches.

"We have long been a leader in deployment of new Internet-based applications and services," said Nate McQueen, media development architect, University of Washington. "We support many bandwidth-intensive applications, including transmission of streaming video at rates up to 5.6 Mbps to users and on-demand multi-media archiving and retrieval. We believe InfiniBand is a promising interconnect technology that can meet our projected data center bandwidth needs, while relieving a lot of data center complexity and management overhead. The Paceline 4100 is the first 4x switch to arrive in our labs and we are excited to evaluate its performance impact."

Now more than ever, IT organizations must optimize technology investments and generate rapid returns. Two factors are blocking data centers from achieving these goals. Existing server I/O technology causes a performance bottleneck, sapping as much as 50 percent of CPU cycles, and a proliferation of specialized networking technologies to support new clustered systems and storage drives data center cost and complexity higher.

"With significant national research and development responsibilities, Sandia constantly evaluates new technologies," said Curt Janssen, team leader, Sandia National Laboratories. "InfiniBand is being considered as an interconnect for our small to mid-range computational clusters. Paceline's 4x intelligent InfiniBand switch will be part of our pilot InfiniBand fabric."

InfiniBand is an open, cost-effective I/O architecture developed by a consortium that includes the world's largest computer companies. With Paceline's intelligent fabric switches and embedded Apex Software, organizations can rapidly leverage InfiniBand's ability to deliver as much as an 8x increase in throughput over traditional Gigabit Ethernet and TCP/IP interconnects; it delivers a 90 percent reduction in latency and eliminates communications overhead that consumes as much as 50 percent of server CPU cycles. Paceline makes high performance InfiniBand fabrics as easy to deploy and operate as an Ethernet network.

"InfiniBand is an emerging technology for server and storage products that brings tremendous value to enterprise and HPC organizations," said Jamie Gruener, senior analyst, The Yankee Group. "Making InfiniBand easy to deploy will be critical, and by embedding fabric management software into its switches, Paceline will help accelerate the adoption of this technology."

Paceline is targeting enterprise and HPC customers. The Yankee Group places the market for InfiniBand-enabled servers and storage at $1.5 billion by 2006.

The HPC market is moving rapidly to begin testing its software codes on 4x InfiniBand fabrics. "We see InfiniBand's remote-direct-memory-access (RDMA) feature as the key to the next generation of high performance parallel programming systems," said Dr. Ewing Lusk, senior computer scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. "Using technology and expertise from Paceline, we are porting our widely used MPICH software to InfiniBand. This will enable any of the thousands of MPICH users to transparently move their codes to clusters that have been InfiniBand-enabled by Paceline."

Paceline intelligent switches include features not offered by other InfiniBand switches, including resilient topology control, intelligent fabric management and a comprehensive set of management interfaces. These features enable Paceline to meet enterprise requirements for fast and efficient deployment and operation. The Paceline 4100 is designed for "plug-and-play" deployment, offering:

-- Policy engines that simplify fabric configuration;

-- Resilient topology control for high fabric availability and scalability;

-- Embedded subnet manager for "plug-and-play" installation;

-- Hot standby subnet manager for high availability;

-- Load balancing for optimum performance;

-- Non-disruptive software upgrades for maximum up-time;

-- Management authentication to ensure security;

-- Web GUI and familiar CLI interfaces ease management;

-- Out-of-band Ethernet and RS-232 management access;

-- Integration with popular enterprise management platforms, such as BMC Patrol, HP OpenView and Tivoli NetView.

"The InfiniBand market is gaining tremendous momentum," said Barry Kallander, Paceline president and CEO. "The benefits of InfiniBand and its price/performance advantages over other technologies are indisputable - making them very valuable in these challenging economic times. Early testing at IBM, Intel and other leading organizations validate the promise of InfiniBand. With new customers, end-to-end InfiniBand solutions and aggressive channel strategies, Paceline is in an enviable position to move organizations from early adopters to widespread deployment."

Pricing and Availability

Generally available beginning in the first quarter of 2003, the eight port Paceline 4100 with embedded Apex software, lists at $7,995. Additionally, Paceline is offering an HPC Application Starter Kit targeted at environments with server clusters that run highly parallel applications. The kit includes MSTI's MPI/Pro middleware, four HCA cards, a Paceline 4100 switch with Apex Software and cables and is priced at $9,995, representing as much as a 44 percent savings over the list price of the individual components. Paceline is accepting orders for the Starter Kit now, for delivery in January.

About Paceline Systems

Paceline Systems Corporation, based in Acton, Mass., is the leader in intelligent InfiniBand fabric solutions for enterprise data centers and high performance computing environments. The company's InfiniBand product family provides an end-to-end solution to data center connectivity challenges and dramatically improves price/performance while reducing operations costs. Paceline's 4000 family of switching systems feature embedded Apex Software, which makes InfiniBand fabrics easy to deploy and easy to use. Paceline's products are designed to meet the stringent reliability, scalability and interoperability requirements found in large enterprise environments. Paceline is funded by blue-chip venture capital firms that include BancBoston Ventures, Kodiak Venture Partners, Commonwealth Capital, ABS Ventures and Goldman Sachs. For more information, visit the company Web site at www.pacelinesystems.com or call 978-263-9255.