QLogic 40Gb/sec host channel adapters, mezzanine cards, directors and edge switches provide HPC customers with faster time-to-solutions

PORTLAND, Ore., Nov. 16 -- SC09 -- Establishing the broadest portfolio of Quad Data Rate (QDR) InfiniBand solutions in the industry, QLogic Corp., a leading supplier of high performance network infrastructure solutions, today announced that a selected QLogic portfolio of end-to-end 40Gb/sec QDR InfiniBand products will be resold by HP as part of the HP Unified Cluster Portfolio.

The HP Unified Cluster Portfolio makes standard-based clusters easy to configure and manage with breakthrough technologies such as QLogic QDR InfiniBand. The QLogic QDR host channel adapters (HCAs), directors and edge switches coupled with HP's expertise, help organizations achieve successful results with HPC applications such as weather modeling, high energy physics, reservoir simulation, scalable visualization, computer aided engineering, impact analysis and computational chemistry.

QLogic's suite of InfiniBand products delivers industry leading scalability and the highest performance QDR technology in the industry. With the lowest per-port power consumption in the industry and innovative installation wizards, the QLogic QDR InfiniBand portfolio is easy to deploy and significantly reduces energy costs. By delivering end-to-end 40Gb/sec bandwidth, high message rates, and extremely low latency, the QLogic QDR InfiniBand portfolio enables high performance computing customers to complete their simulations faster and solve problems sooner.

"In addition to delivering industry-leading performance, QLogic is intent on making InfiniBand as easy to deploy and operate as any other datacenter networking technology," said Jesse Parker, vice president and general manager of the network solutions group at QLogic. "By leveraging our Fibre Channel expertise in the development of our QDR portfolio, we are delivering an entire suite of enterprise-friendly InfiniBand solutions that complement HP's renowned servers and HPC offerings."

"High-performance computing customers want scalable technology solutions that can reduce their total cost of ownership while speeding application performance," said Steve Cumings, director of marketing, Scalable Computing and Infrastructure organization, HP. "Combining HP ProLiant and BladeSystem c-Class servers with QLogic QDR InfiniBand offerings allows customers to maximize the value of their high-performance computing or enterprise clusters through increased performance and energy efficiency as well as simplified deployment."

"High performance computing users are exceedingly demanding," said David Vellante, chief research advocate, Wikibon.org. "A big challenge in HPC is keeping processors busy and pipelines full. The bottleneck in many applications is the latency and message rate across inter-processor communications links (IPCs). QLogic's InfiniBand products will provide HP HPC customers critical technology to maximize throughput and minimize latencies across their networks."

QLogic 7300 Series QDR InfiniBand Host Channel Adapters

Based on the QLogic TrueScale ASIC platform for QDR InfiniBand, the QLogic 7300 Series delivers a higher messaging rate and lower scalable latency than any comparative cluster-interconnect available today. Delivering a message rate of 30 million messages per second, the QLogic 7300 Series outperforms competitive QDR adapters by a ratio of more than five to one (based on results from the "OSU MPI Multiple Bandwidth / Message Rate Test.").

QLogic QDR host channel adapter solutions for HP include:

• QLogic 7342 QDR HCAs for HP ProLiant DL and HP ProLiant SL servers.
• QLogic 4X QDR InfiniBand dual port mezzanine HCAs for HP BladeSystem c-Class servers.
• QLogic 12000 Series QDR InfiniBand Switches and Directors.

The QLogic 12000 Series QDR InfiniBand Switch platform marks a quantum advancement in the InfiniBand switch market. The first InfiniBand switch platform based on QLogic's own Truescale ASIC technology, the 12000 family ranges from fixed configuration edge switches to fully configurable, modular director class switches. The 12000 Series platform was designed to provide a true enterprise-class solution that scales from the very small to the very large. 12000 Series switches simplify InfiniBand networking with automated installation, configuration, and monitoring of the fabric. QLogic InfiniBand switches provide QoS and flexible fabric partitioning that improve the utilization of InfiniBand resources and adapt to the evolving requirements of an organization.

QLogic 12000 Series QDR InfiniBand director switches offer several significant advantages over comparative products, including 160 percent more connectivity options (864 ports); 100 percent more aggregate bandwidth (51.8 terabits per second); and more flexibility and models to choose from (5 models). Unlike competitive director designs that waste ports networking two chassis together to reach more than 324 ports, the modularly designed QLogic 12000 Series director can scale from as few as 18 ports to the maximum of 864 ports, all on a single switch, without any messy cabling.

QLogic QDR directors and switches for HP include:

• QLogic 12800-360 Director with 648 ports for HP ProLiant DL and HP ProLiant SL servers.
• QLogic 12800-180 Director with 324 ports for HP ProLiant DL and HP ProLiant SL servers.
• QLogic BLc 4X QDR InfiniBand switch for HP BladeSystem c-Class servers.

An extension of the QLogic 12000 Series, the QLogic BLc 4X QDR InfiniBand switch is a bladed switch designed specifically for HP BladeSystem c-Class servers. The BLc 4X QDR InfiniBand switch includes a unique pluggable management module option that allows the switch to function as an internally managed unit.

InfiniBand Networks powered by QLogic

QLogic offers a comprehensive, end-to-end portfolio of InfiniBand networking products for HPC including QDR host channel adapters, QDR multi-protocol director and edge switches and intuitive tools to install, operate, and maintain high performance fabrics. Delivering the industry's highest message rate, lowest MPI latency and highest effective bandwidth, QLogic InfiniBand adapters enable MPI and TCP applications to scale to thousands of nodes with industry-leading price-performance. As the most comprehensive and flexible HPC cluster interconnect fabric solutions on the market, QLogic QDR InfiniBand switches incorporate the industry's only management tools that enable an administrator to install and boot an InfiniBand fabric in minutes, helping to accommodate the growing demand for high performance computational clusters and grids.

About QLogic

QLogic (NSDQ: QLGC) is a global leader and technology innovator in high performance networking, including adapters, switches and ASICs. Leading OEMs and channel partners worldwide rely on QLogic products for their data, storage and server networking solutions. QLogic is a NASDAQ Global Select company and is included in the S&P 500. For more information, visit www.qlogic.com.

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Source: QLogic Corp.