Connecting the majority of worldwide petascale systems, Mellanox InfiniBand delivers highest efficiency and scalability for high-performance computing

HAMBURG, June 1 -- Mellanox Technologies, Ltd., a leading supplier of end-to-end connectivity solutions for datacenter servers and storage systems, today announced that its InfiniBand adapters and switch solutions demonstrated the highest growth on the TOP500 in the last two years. As reported in the 35th edition of the TOP500 list, the growth of Mellanox InfiniBand-connected systems increased to more than 41 percent of the TOP500. Mellanox InfiniBand enables the highest system efficiency and utilization, up to 96 percent, and provides users with the best return on investment for their high-performance computing server and storage infrastructure computing requirements.

Mellanox ConnectX InfiniBand adapters and switch systems based on its InfiniScale IV switch silicon provide the scalable, low-latency, and power-efficient interconnect for the world's fastest supercomputers, representing 50 percent of the Top10, 64 percent of the Top100, and the majority of the Top300 systems. Mellanox end-to-end 40Gb/s InfiniBand solutions deliver the leading performance and utilization for the most power efficient systems on the list.

The total number of InfiniBand-connected CPU cores on the TOP500 list has grown 73 percent, from 1.04 million in June 2009 to 1.8 million in June 2010. This growth highlights the increasing demand for InfiniBand as a way to maximize computing resources, productivity and performance in the world's fastest computer systems.

"Mellanox's end-to-end 40Gb/s connectivity provides the most scalable, reliable, and highest performance solution for demanding compute applications around the world delivering not only the highest return on investment, but also the lowest power consumption," said Eyal Waldman, president, chairman and CEO of Mellanox Technologies. "We are experiencing the growth of InfiniBand in the high-performance computing markets and are now seeing its adoption in additional markets such as financial, database, virtualized datacenters, Web 2.0 and cloud computing. InfiniBand has passed the early stage of adoption as a server and storage interconnect and is now entering into a growing number of mainstream vertical markets."

"Advancements in multicore CPU architectures and the rise in GPU computing are placing greater demands on server and storage interconnects for higher bandwidth and lower application latencies," said Jie Wu, Research Director, Technical Computing at IDC. "The results on the TOP500 list are a clear indication that Mellanox InfiniBand solutions have been gaining traction by many supercomputer buyers. New technology solutions developed by Mellanox, such as application offloads and GPU cluster efficiency enhancements, will continue to address the market demand for higher performance and improved efficiency."

Published twice a year and publicly available at www.Top500.org, the TOP500 list ranks the world's most powerful computer systems according to the Linpack benchmark rating system. The TOP500 list is a respected industry report that indicates usage trends in computing and interconnect solutions.

Highlights of InfiniBand usage on the June 2010 TOP500 list include:

• InfiniBand is the only growing standard interconnect technology, with 208 systems, 41.6 percent of the list, up 37 percent from June 2009. Ethernet connected systems declined by 14 percent in the same period of time.
   
• Mellanox InfiniBand provides the highest system utilization on the TOP500, up to 96 percent system utilization, and connects the Top5 most efficient systems.
   
• Mellanox 40Gb/s InfiniBand is the only 40Gb/s proven technology on the list, and enables the high system utilization in the TOP500.
   
• Mellanox 40Gb/s InfiniBand is the only 40Gb/s scalable technology on the list, connecting two out of the world's three sustained petaflop performance supercomputers.
   
• InfiniBand connects nearly 4x the number of Cray-based system and approximately 6x more the number of Blue Gene-based systems in the Top100 systems.
   
• InfiniBand connects the world's most powerful supercomputers in the Top10 and Top20.
   
• InfiniBand is the most used interconnect in the Top100, Top200 and Top300: 64 percent of the Top100, 56 percent of the Top200, 47 of the Top300.
   
• Clusters continue to be the dominant system architecture with 84.8 percent of the TOP500 list.
   
• Mellanox end-to-end 40Gb/s scalable HPC solution accelerates NVIDIA GPU-based systems with the new NVIDIA GPUDirect technology that enables faster GPU communications.
   
• Mellanox InfiniBand interconnect products present in the TOP500 are used by a diverse list of applications, from large-scale, high-performance computing to commercial technical computing and enterprise datacenters.

About Mellanox

Mellanox Technologies (NASDAQ: MLNX) (TASE: MLNX) 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.