ConnectX-2 InfiniBand adapters with CORE-Direct (Collectives Offload Resource Engine) capabilities provide next evolutionary step for HPC cluster efficiency

PORTLAND, Ore., Nov. 16 -- Mellanox Technologies, Ltd., a leading supplier of end-to-end connectivity solutions for datacenter servers and storage systems, today announced the availability of ConnectX-2 adapter products with CORE-Direct, application acceleration and scaling technology. The new capabilities in ConnectX-2 mark the next evolutionary step in high-performance computing (HPC) interconnect solutions that will enable significant improvements in application performance and scalability, and thus increase the productivity of compute centers.

"Mellanox is continuing to lead the HPC communication technology performance curve by providing the most advanced interconnect solutions with full data transport acceleration in hardware, and as a result is enabling the most efficient systems in the TOP500," said Michael Kagan, chief technology officer at Mellanox Technologies. "By offloading application interprocessor communication in our ConnectX-2 with CORE-Direct adapters, we improve network efficiency, extend cluster scale-out and enable compute scalability for the Exaflop era."

To meet the needs of scientific research, supercomputers are growing at an increasing rate. As supercomputers increase in size from mere thousands to hundreds-of-thousands of processor cores, new performance and scalability challenges have emerged. Improving performance by separately optimizing the computer's algorithms, communication and computational aspects is no longer effective. These issues have become co-mingled and must be comprehensively addressed.

Mellanox ConnectX-2 with CORE-Direct is the first host channel adapter (HCA) in the market to process in hardware application communications frequently used by scientific simulation for data broadcast, global synchronization and data collection. By offloading these collectives communication, ConnectX-2 adapters help to reduce simulation completion time by accelerating the synchronization process and freeing up CPU cycles to work on the simulation, thus enabling greater scalability by eliminating system jitter and noise -- the biggest issues for performance at scale.

"Collectives Communication is a key limiting factor to parallel application efficiency and scalability. Offloading these communications to the network to minimize the impact of system noise, combined with the use of non-blocking collective operations that enable overlapping communications and computation, provide powerful capabilities for extending application scalability," said Richard Graham, distinguished member of the research staff, Computer Science and Mathematics Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). "ORNL, through research on scalable collectives communication sponsored by DOE's Office of Advanced Computing Research FASTOS program, and Mellanox, have collaborated to find the solution that will enable the next generation of supercomputers to scale more efficiently. The new CORE-Direct technology in ConnectX-2 reflects the results of this joint effort."

The advanced feature set combined with the highest I/O performance of any standard interconnect makes ConnectX-2 with CORE-Direct the leading interconnect adapter solution for high-performance server and storage computing infrastructures. Together with Mellanox world-leading InfiniBand switch systems, FabricIT comprehensive switch management software and cables, Mellanox provides its customers with the richest, most advanced and highest performing end-to-end networking solutions for the world's most compute-demanding applications.

"Requirements to scale complex applications, need for more detailed analysis capability and increase in HPC cluster size are creating a new bottleneck that demands advanced application offloading," said Reza Rooholamini, director of solutions engineering at Dell. "By providing low-latency and industry-leading high-bandwidth point-to-point and collectives communication routine offload, ConnectX-2 InfiniBand adapters combined with Dell PowerEdge servers significantly reduce overhead and enhance CPU efficiency, accelerating end-user simulations."

Availability

ConnectX-2 adapter cards and ICs are available now. Pricing is available upon request.

Demonstration at SC09 (Nov. 16-19, 2009)

Visit Mellanox Technologies during SC09, booth#1301,  to see live demonstrations of Mellanox's industry-leading, end-to-end 40Gb/s InfiniBand connectivity portfolio, including the Company's new ConnectX-2 40Gb/s InfiniBand with CORE-Direct and Ethernet adapters, 36 to 648-port 40Gb/s InfiniBand switches, BridgeX gateways, and FabricIT switch management software. Visit www.mellanox.com/sc09 for more information, including Mellanox's conference speaking sessions and booth presentation times during the conference.

About Mellanox

Mellanox Technologies is a leading supplier of end-to-end connectivity solutions for servers and storage that optimize datacenter performance. Mellanox products deliver market-leading bandwidth, performance, scalability, power conservation and cost-effectiveness while converging multiple legacy network technologies into one future-proof solution. For the best in performance and scalability, Mellanox is the choice for Fortune 500 datacenters and the world's most powerful supercomputers. Founded in 1999, Mellanox Technologies is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and Yokneam, Israel. For more information, visit Mellanox at www.mellanox.com.

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Source: Mellanox Technologies, Ltd.