MOSCOW, Russia, and HEIDELBERG, Germany, Oct. 25 -- T-Platforms Group, a leading provider of HPC systems, software, services and solutions, today announced it has signed an MOU with the Computing Architecture Group, headed by Prof. Ulrich Brüning at the University of Heidelberg, to develop and bring to market a next generation interconnect technology for highly-scalable supercomputing.

The two parties will create a European joint venture to focus on the final development and productization of an interconnect technology for which the Computing Architecture Group has already produced a working FPGA prototype. The new interconnect is the result of an aggressive research project at the University of Heidelberg labeled EXTOLL (Extreme Low Latency Interconnect). The goal of this project is to develop an interconnect architecture specifically designed to satisfy the needs of low-latency, inter-process-communication in parallel machines. The EXTOLL project encompasses the development of a system architecture which includes advances on the network layer; the attachment of the individual hosts to the interconnect network (network interface controller); and the software layer to enable applications to exploit the EXTOLL hardware and reach higher performance and efficiency.

According to the MOU, T-Platforms will invest capital into the project and obtain an equity position in the joint venture. Additionally, T-Platforms will invest research and development resources to finalize and launch the technology.

EXTOLL, which already has wide recognition throughout the European HPC community, is a high-performance, switchless interconnect technology, and is expected to be available to the worldwide HPC market by the fourth quarter of 2011.

"EXTOLL is an integral part of an HPC system that provides inherent support for multi-core environments, virtually unlimited scalability and a tight coupling between computational units," said Prof. Ulrich Brüning, EXTOLL project lead, University of Heidelberg. "The partnership with T-Platforms will reinforce our development team and enable us to jointly bring this highly anticipated solution to customers, raising EU supercomputing technology leadership to a new level".

According to the MOU, T-Platforms will be the first company to integrate the EXTOLL chip on a system board that will be marketed both as part of T-Platforms integrated HPC solutions and as a stand-alone product. EXTOLL is a significant technology milestone for the European Union as the only HPC interconnect technology developed in the EU that will be available on the mass market next year.

"Entering the European HPC market this year for the first time, it is our highest priority to fuel high-end hardware and software technology development, working in close partnership with the leading research groups and HPC centers," said Vsevolod Opanasenko, CEO of T-Platforms Group. "We are convinced that investing our talent and money into the EXTOLL development effort will result in tremendous benefit not only for the EU, but for the global HPC community."

The EXTOLL technology will be showcased at Booth 1259 during the SC10 exhibition, November 15-18, 2010, at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, La.

About T-Platforms

Established in 2002, T-Platforms Group has completed more than 200 supercomputer installations and is rapidly emerging as one of the leading global HPC companies, providing comprehensive supercomputing systems, software and services, with customer installations consistently included on the TOP500 worldwide list of the most powerful supercomputers. T-Platforms Group consists of T-Platforms, T-Services, T-Massive Computing, and T-Design, with locations in Hannover, Moscow, Kiev and Taipei. For more information on T-Platforms Group, see www.t-platforms.com.

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Source: T-Platforms