Steering committee now includes HP as the IBTA develops and enhances InfiniBand to continue dominance in high performance computing and expand into the enterprise datacenter

BEAVERTON, Ore., April 18 -- The InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA), a global organization dedicated to maintaining and enhancing the InfiniBand specification, today announced that Bull, HP and Leoni have joined the organization and that HP is the newest member of the steering committee. HP joins existing steering committee members: IBM, Intel, Mellanox, Oracle, QLogic and System Fabric Works. Members of the IBTA represent more than 40 of the leading enterprise IT vendors actively contributing to the advancement of the InfiniBand specification.

"Ongoing industry support for InfiniBand and vendor participation in the development of the specification have driven InfiniBand's success in the high performance computing space," said Chet Mehta, co-chair of the IBTA Steering Committee. "The addition of new systems and cable vendors to our membership roster strengthens the organization as a whole and will enhance our efforts to expand InfiniBand adoption in the enterprise datacenter."

"Customers with high performance requirements are looking to maximize speed across every aspect of their technology infrastructure from the server to the edge of the network," said Ed Turkel, marketing manager, High Performance Computing and Service Providers business, HP. "As an active member of the IBTA steering committee, HP is committed to the ongoing pursuit of increased infrastructure performance as a way to enable customers to solve increasingly complex computational problems, be the first to innovate in their markets, or make scientific discoveries and advancements faster than they ever could before."

HP is the world's largest technology company and brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure. Bull is an Information Technology company dedicated to helping corporations and public sector organizations optimize the architecture, operations and financial return of their Information Systems and mission-critical

related businesses. Leoni is a leading provider of cables and cable systems to the automotive sector and other industries.

Key deliverables of the IBTA this year and a main focus of the steering committee include:

• Defining and implementing InfiniBand enhancements -- ongoing development and maintenance of the InfiniBand specification.
• Development of the IBTA Roadmap -- the roadmap is researched and developed as a collaborative effort from the various IBTA working groups and details 1x, 4x, 8x and 12x EDR and FDR, incorporating 64/66 encoding, with bandwidths reaching 300Gb/s data rate EDR in 2011. The newly defined link speeds are designed to keep the rate of performance increase in line with systems-level performance increases.
• Publication of the IBTA Integrators' List -- available online, the latest list contains 21 devices and more than 200 cables including cables with CXP, QSFP and MicroGiGaCN connectors to support both DDR and QDR speeds and 4x and 12x connections.
• Plugfest events -- the most recent event, Plugfest 19, was held at the University of New Hampshire's InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL) from April 4-8, 2011. Plugfest 19 included the first alpha testing of FDR cables which are designed to run at 14 Gb/s. The IBTA working groups are defining a complete test suite to validate the specifications for both FDR and EDR data rates.

About the InfiniBand Trade Association

The InfiniBand Trade Association was founded in 1999 and is chartered with maintaining and furthering the InfiniBand specification. The IBTA is led by a distinguished steering committee that includes HP, IBM, Intel, Mellanox, Oracle, QLogic and System Fabric Works. Other members of the IBTA represent leading enterprise IT vendors who are actively contributing to the advancement of the InfiniBand specification. The IBTA markets and promotes InfiniBand from an industry perspective through online, marketing and public relations engagements, and unites the industry through IBTA-sponsored technical events and resources. For more information on the IBTA, visit www.infinibandta.org.

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Source: InfiniBand Trade Association