The Leading Source for Global News and Information Covering the Ecosystem of High Productivity Computing
November 03, 2006
Mellanox Technologies, Ltd., a supplier of semiconductor-based, high performance interconnect products, has demostrated that 20 Gb/s InfiniBand with NFS-RDMA open-source solutions delivers over ten times the maximum theoretical performance of NFS file systems using a Gigabit Ethernet connection. Mellanox showed this performance with client machines interconnected with 20 Gb/s InfiniBand to the new Mellanox MTD2000 NFS-RDMA Server Product Development Kit (PDK) featuring a RAID-5 back-end storage subsystem with SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) hard disk drives.
"Mellanox 20 Gb/s InfiniBand and remote direct memory access (RDMA) opens up the performance bottleneck of networked file system I/O for applications such as high-performance computing, EDA, financial, backup, disaster recovery, and clustered database solutions," said Sujal Das, director of software product management for Mellanox Technologies. "We believe the MTD2000 PDK will reduce development costs, accelerate time to market and enable OEMs to provide cost-effective NFS-RDMA storage systems based on software available from the open source community."
With two NFS-RDMA clients interconnect to the MTD2000 through 20 Gb/s InfiniBand interconnect and reading from the file server cache, 1400 MB/s of throughput was measured using the IOZone file system benchmark. When actual write performance to disk was measured, nearly 400 MB/s of throughput was demonstrated with RAID-5, which can be increased by cascading additional SAS hard disks. This measured performance exceeds the maximum theoretical performance over a Gigabit Ethernet link of 125 MB/s which is commonly used for networked file storage connectivity today.
The PDK includes the MTD2000 Filer Unit, the MTD2000E Extender Storage Chassis (optional) for higher read/write disk I/O performance, associated documentation, and a comprehensive software development kit (SDK).
The MTD2000 Filer Unit is a 3U, 16-drive, 576 GB high performance storage unit based on industry-standard components including a dual-core Intel Woodcrest-based motherboard, Mellanox InfiniBand 20Gb/s HCA adapter card, LSI Logic MegaRAID SAS 8480E adapter, and SAS disk drives. The MTD2000E Extender Storage Chassis and SAS cascading cable can be used to increase the number of disk drives up to 126. The SDK includes open-source NFS-RDMA server and client implementations, and RPMs tested and hardened for the MTD2000 platform. It also includes a user guide, benchmark charts, QA test report, and optional software support terms and options.
The NFS-RDMA client software is interoperable and supported with OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) version 1.1 and supports major Linux operating system distributions. The NFS-RDMA server software, which is ready for installation on the MTD2000, is supported on Novell SLES 10 and is compatible and interoperable with OFED 1.1.
The Mellanox MTD2000 and MTD2000E components of the PDK are available today and can be used with open source NFS-RDMA software. The SDK and associated support is scheduled to be available in December 2006.
(Digg, Technorati, more)
PGI Accelerator™ Fortran 95/03 and C99 compilers for x64+NVIDIA
Accelerate applications on x64+GPU platforms by adding OpenMP-like compiler directives to existing Fortran and C programs. Available now for Linux, MacOS and Windows. Download a free 15 day trial.
Platform HPC Workgroup Manager
Platform HPC Workgroup Manager integrates all the cluster productivity tools you need to deploy, run and manage your HPC environment.
C-DAC announces plans for a petaflop system; IBM researchers are working on vertical integration techniques to extend Moore's Law another 15 years. We recap those stories and more in our weekly wrapup.
Read More...
The Moscow State University supercomputer, Lomonosov, has been selected for a high-performance makeover, with the goal of tripling its processing power to achieve petaflop-level performance in 2010. T-Platforms, who developed and manufactured the supercomputer, is the odds-on favorite to lead the project.
Read More...
Right on schedule, Intel has launched its Xeon 5600 processors, codenamed "Westmere EP." The 5600 represents the 32nm sequel to the Xeon 5500 (Nehalem EP) for dual-socket servers. Intel is touting better performance and energy efficiency, along with new security features, as the big selling points of the new Xeons.
Read More...
Mar 19 | OfficialWire | New super to support intelligence work Down Under. Read more...
Mar 18 | ChannelWeb | Westmere parts already showing up in HPC machines. Read more...
Mar 17 | The Register | But what about the tier ones? Read more...
Mar 17 | Cadalyst Magazine | A new generation of workstations is changing the nature of technical computing. Read more...
Mar 17 | Linux Magazine | Latest iteration of Sun Grid Engine able to tap into Cloud. Read more...
Jan 12 | | In-depth look at vSMP Foundation server virtualization technology, technical implementation, use cases and capabilities. The technical whitepaper provides an architectural overview and details on the three vSMP Foundation products: vSMP Foundation for SMP, vSMP Foundation for Cluster and vSMP Foundation for Cloud.
Jan 18 | | This white paper discusses Gore’s copper cable assemblies, and how they continue to exceed the standards for providing reliable, cost-effective solutions for high-performance computer applications.
Join this online panel discussion for live Q&A with leading industry experts, analysts, and end-users to discuss the latest innovations, best practices, barriers to implementation, and measurable benefits of server virtualization with a particular focus on today's real world solutions.
Learn about scalable fault-tolerant architectures and examples of energy efficient and scalable supercomputing clusters using dual QDR InfiniBand to combine capacity computing with network failover capabilities with the help of programming languages such as MPI and a robust Linux cluster management package.
LIVE@SCO9: The IBM team discusses new innovations in hardware, software and services that help clients better understand their workloads and get insight from their R&D efforts. Technology demonstrations include the soon-to-be-released Power7 HPC processor, the DCS990 system with 2.4 petabytes of storage, the xCAT management tool, secure HPC cloud computing and more. Winners of two HPCwire Readers' and Editors’ Choice Awards! Take the IBM virtual tour at SC09 or more information go online to: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/deepcomputing/sc09.html