SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 14 – At SC12, Gnodal Limited, the high-performance data center networking company, announced the details of the Gnodal Fabric implementation based on a multi-switch, core data center deployment by Global Geophysical Services, Inc.

Global Geophysical Services, Inc. ("Global") is a leading provider of high-density Reservoir Grade 3D (RG3D) seismic solutions. The company's data-processing operations create detailed subsurface images of the Earth, using data collected with surface geophone arrays over an area of exploration interest. That data enables Global and their clients to extract extremely detailed information on rock properties that can drive exploration, fluid prediction, reservoir development and well placement.

To conduct this extremely complex imaging and analysis, Global deployed several of Gnodal's switches in their data center. This enabled the company to achieve its goals for low latency, throughput and reliability, replacing its central core switch with a distributed Gnodal Fabric solution that provides scalability and easy upgrade paths.

"After implementing a Gnodal-based fabric, we determined that previous bottlenecks had been alleviated," explained Bill Menger, head of High Performance Computing for Global. "By alleviating the congestion present in the central core solution, we were then in a position to invest in state-of-the-art SSD storage and significantly increase production capability."

Global's data center comprises more than 4,000 compute cores in 320 servers, which are connected to a series of 1/10GbE Top-of-Rack switches. Most compute servers connect into these switches, and in-turn, these switches connect into the data center network powered by Gnodal Fabric. Several servers are directly connected at 10 or 20GbE to support high-throughput applications.

Global replaced its traditional chassis-based core with a distributed core comprised of Gnodal switches, which allows for additional flexibility while maintaining performance. By applying Gnodal's single-pane management capability, Global is able to manage multiple switches as one integrated fabric. Gnodal's applied technique in scaling across multiple switches with unified fabric links that are actively coupled with anti-congestion and dynamic load-balancing, enables the distributed core to perform at the required levels. This distributed core model also allows for a "pay-as-you-grow" practice, rather than a massive and costly up-front capital acquisition expense.

"Global's experience is a great example of how the Gnodal Fabric prevents network congestion in storage-intensive HPC environments, and takes advantage of today's increased storage performance by adaptively load-balancing flows between switches without realizing a performance hit," said Atchison Frazer, Gnodal's Chief Marketing Officer. "Along with delivering the predictability, low latency and performance, the Gnodal multi-switch environment is managed as a large virtual switch, enabling operations across all ports to be orchestrated from one single point and lowering administration burden."

About Gnodal

The Gnodal ASIC Ethernet switch architecture features a congestion-aware performance and workload engine that allows for ultra-low latency transmission, while utilizing a dynamic, fully adaptive load-balancing mechanism to equitably arbitrate a pre-emptive pathway for large data sets, high-computational applications and massive storage demands prevalent in HPC and Big Data environments. The 72-port 40GbE "fabric-in-a-box" GS0072 solution extends Gnodal's leadership in port-density ToR solutions and won the best-in-class award for networking at Interop 2012.

Gnodal's high-performance network fabric delivers industry leading speed to help reduce latency. Gnodal's highest port-density 1U and 2U ToR switches are ideally suited for deployment within co-location environments and enterprise data centers. On ingress into GS-Series switching, the initial latency is sub-150 nanoseconds (store/forward) with each subsequent Gnodal switch added to the fabric incurring only 66 nanoseconds of additional latency (cut-through).

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Source: Gnodal Ltd.