Need for cost efficiencies will drive trends towards virtualization and cloud computing, accelerating enterprise computing platform centralization

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Feb. 19 -- Believing that the economic downturn makes computing technology key to reducing cost and increasing operational efficiency, the HyperTransport Technology Consortium today stated that it sees ongoing demand for optimized high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure capable of supporting job allocation, data handling and peak power flexibility. Highlighting hardware and software virtualization and consolidation as vital enablers of cloud computing, Consortium members discussed the applications and technologies that will be central to the high-performance computing market in the coming years at the International HyperTransport Symposium and Workshop 2009 held last week. The Workshop took place at the HyperTransport Center of Excellence, which is managed by the Computer Architecture Group of the University of Heidelberg in Mannheim, Germany.

"Demand for efficient datacenter and server farm infrastructure will continue to rise despite weaknesses in the global economy. Therefore, service provision players will need computing platforms that can support peak performance, real-time resource allocation and minimized Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)," said Mario Cavalli, general manager of the HyperTransport Consortium. "Servers must offer an even more refined balance of performance, power consumption, mission-critical reliability and cost. As the industry's lowest latency, highest bandwidth and high-dependability interconnect technology, HyperTransport will be central to commercial enterprises' ability to meet this new HPC market challenge."

Cloud computing gives the commercial enterprise sector a way to outsource whole or part of its enterprise software application and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) needs on a pay-as-you-go basis using Software as a Service (SaaS) techniques. The approach drastically reduces computing infrastructure and resource investments.

As a market-proven technology adopted by leading HPC solution providers, HyperTransport will play an increasingly pivotal role in meeting upcoming HPC industry requirements. In its eight years of successful and widespread adoption -- ranging from consumer products to top performing supercomputers -- the technology has evolved in its performance and features, delivering increased and ongoing value to users. The Consortium's recent releases of the HyperTransport 3.1 Link specification and the HTX3 HyperTransport Connector specification -- supporting up to 51.2 GB/s and 20.8 GB/s of aggregate bandwidth respectively -- enable the future-ready, high-performance computing infrastructure required to satisfy the industry's rising demand for performance, power and cost efficiency, as well as emerging HPC techniques like cloud computing.

About the International HyperTransport Symposium and Workshop 2009

The International HyperTransport Symposium and Workshop 2009 included speakers from both industry and academia, who provided updates on the most recent and upcoming developments in HyperTransport technology. The event explored the performance and TCO impact of HyperTransport on high-performance and fully scalable server cluster applications. Symposium presenters included:

• AMD: Mike Uhler, vice president, Accelerated Computing and Consortium President
• Georgia Institute of Technology: Prof. Sudhakar Yalamanchili
• HyperTransport Consortium: Mario Cavalli, general managerMySQL Founder: Monty Widenius
• University of Heidelberg & HyperTransport Center of Excellence: Prof. Ulrich Brüning

The Workshop on HyperTransport research and applications included a number of peer-reviewed papers and was keynoted by Prof. José Duato from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain. Prof. Duato discussed the role of HyperTransport in future system architectures and how it could be used to overcome the current scalability, power and memory walls.

"The mission of the HyperTransport Center of Excellence is to support and promote the use and applications of HyperTransport technology to research and industry, giving us the opportunity to highlight how these two groups have been working together so successfully in advancing the technology," stated Cavalli. "With this year's Symposium, we have hosted the first International HyperTransport Technology Workshop, where members of academia showcased results of their HyperTransport-centric research projects and proposed new ideas for possible industry adoption."

About the HyperTransport Technology Consortium

The HyperTransport Technology Consortium is a membership-based, non-profit organization that licenses, manages and promotes HyperTransport Technology. The HyperTransport Consortium was founded in 2001 by leading technology innovators like AMD, Broadcom, Cisco, NVIDIA and Sun Microsystems and counts several industry-leading members worldwide, including AMD, Broadcom, Cisco, Cray, Dell, HP, IBM, NVIDIA and Sun Microsystems. Consortium membership is based on a yearly fee and it is open to companies interested in licensing the royalty-free use of HyperTransport technology and intellectual property. Consortium members have full access to the HyperTransport technical support database, they may attend Consortium meetings and events and may benefit from a variety of technical and business promotion services that HTC offers at no cost to its members. To learn more about member benefits and how to become a Consortium member, visit the Consortium Web site at http://www.hypertransport.org.

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Source: HyperTransport Technology Consortium