Luxtera Powers SCinet InfiniBand Network

First cluster deployment of extended-reach 40G optical active cable

CARLSBAD, Calif., Nov. 17 -- Luxtera, the worldwide leader in Silicon CMOS Photonics, today announced that its 40 Gigabit Quad Data Rate (QDR) Optical Active Cable (OAC), Blazar, will provide connectivity for the SCinet InfiniBand network at the SC08 conference. Considered the most powerful network in the world, SCinet will run during the seven-day convention to support the advanced applications and network experiments that have become the trademark of the conference.

This is the first QDR cluster deployment for the Blazar OAC. Blazar fulfills demands for high speed, reliability, and ability to design the network without the usual distance limitations of traditional copper or optical cables.

Luxtera's production version of Blazar includes integrated optical I/O, waveguides, splitters, modulators, photodetectors, and electronics on a single low cost Silicon CMOS die. Blazar is the only 40G OAC that supports high speed optical network deployments from 1 meter to 300 meters, providing the freedom to design optimal networks, regardless of space and layout limitations. Utilizing Silicon CMOS Photonics, Blazar offers a better alternative to legacy optical and copper connectivity between network systems and ultimately improves performance while reducing capital and maintenance costs. The company is now accepting production orders for Blazar.

"At SC08, we offer exhibitors and attendees the world's fastest network capabilities in support of their high performance demonstrations," said Patrick Dorn, senior network engineer at NCSA and chair of the SCinet committee. "Luxtera's Blazar cables meet our requirements for a high speed, highly reliable backbone and offer the flexibility of extended reach for exhibitors using our innovative InfiniBand network."

"Today's multi-core, multi-socket servers require 40Gb/s InfiniBand to remove the I/O bottleneck and accelerate clustering productivity," said Sash Sunkara, vice president of marketing for Mellanox Technologies. "With its increased reach of up to 300 meters, Luxtera's Blazar cables can facilitate the deployment of multi-thousand node clusters and bring InfiniBand to the desktop in departmental environments."

"SCinet is the fastest network in the world showcasing the latest, most advanced high performance technologies. SCinet trusting the backbone of its showcase network to Luxtera demonstrates that our products are ready for volume deployments," said Greg Young, president and CEO of Luxtera. "Blazar is breaking the High Performance Computing industry's preconceived notions about trading off speed, cost, and interconnect distance. Network designers can now have it all."

About SCinet and SC08

SCinet is the very high-performance network built each year to support the annual SC conference. SCinet features both a high-performance production-quality network and an extremely high performance experimental network, Xnet. Volunteers from educational institutions, high performance computing sites, network OEMs, research networks, and telecommunications carriers work together to design and deliver the SCinet network each year. OEMs and carriers donate much of the equipment and services needed to build the LAN and WAN infrastructure. Planning begins more than a year in advance of each SC Conference and culminates with a high-intensity installation just a few weeks before the Conference begins.

SC08, sponsored by the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Scalable Computing and the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Computer Architecture, will showcase how high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis lead to advances in research, education and commerce. This premiere international conference includes technical and education programs, workshops, tutorials, an exhibit area, demonstrations and hands-on learning. For more information, please visit http://sc08.supercomputing.org.

About Luxtera

Luxtera, Inc. is the world leader in Silicon CMOS Photonics. Its mission is to fulfill the world's insatiable demand for bandwidth by uniting the high performance of fiber-optic communications with the low cost and high volume manufacturing advantages of mainstream Silicon CMOS fabrication. Headquartered in Carlsbad, California, Luxtera is a fabless semiconductor company that was founded in 2001 by a team of industry-renowned researchers and technology managers drawn from the communications and semiconductor industries.  Luxtera has received funding from leading venture capitalists including August Capital, New Enterprise Associates and Sevin Rosen Funds. More information can be found on the company's web site: www.luxtera.com.

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Source: Luxtera, Inc.