HPCwire: BLADE Switches Support Dutch National University Research Consortium

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November 05, 2009

BLADE Switches Support Dutch National University Research Consortium

Advanced School for Computing and Imaging selects BLADE RackSwitch 10 Gigabit switches for high performance grid computing and ultra high media streaming

MUNICH, Germany, Nov. 4 -- BLADE Network Technologies, Inc. (BLADE), the trusted leader in datacenter networking, today announced that its BLADE RackSwitch G8124 and G8000 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) switches have been successfully deployed by The Netherlands' Advanced School for Computing and Imaging (ASCI) in its Distributed ASCI Supercomputer 3 (DAS-3) High Performance Cluster Computing system.

BLADE Network Technologies was selected for its ability to deliver high-performance cost-effective 10GbE solutions that can further enhance the network performance of DAS-3 with key traffic management features and ultra-low latency, as well as meet ASCI's requirements for high throughput 10GbE server connectivity for powering ultra high-definition visualization.

ASCI DAS-3 runs over a country-wide grid computing access network and enables ASCI research teams at disparate sites, including four universities, to jointly collaborate on various aspects of parallel, distributed and grid computing, as well as large-scale multimedia content analysis.

A BLADE RackSwitch G8124 24-port 10GbE switch is complementing and enhancing the existing access network which features a novel internal high-speed wide-area interconnect called StarPlane, based on dedicated 10GbE lightpaths from SURFnet, the country's National Research and Education Network provider. In addition to high throughput and low latency 10GbE performance characteristics, the rich layer 2 and layer 3 network feature sets supported by the BLADE RackSwitch G8000 and RackSwitch G8124 switches will enable more control over the establishment of StarPlane links between the five sites. BLADE's RackSwitch Active Multi-Path (AMP) function, for example, will support segregation of traffic ensuring more efficient usage of lightpaths and without the need to block links and force traffic over intermediary hops.

A multimedia laboratory with high-end visualisation infrastructure being built by the VU University in Amsterdam will also connect to DAS-3 to leverage the available compute and video resources. This initiative is part of the Intertain project with the lab at VU University to be served by a BLADE RackSwitch G8000 switch enabling a high performance, low latency dual 10GbE connection to a ultra-HD video system that can be accessed and shared by the other participating sites over the StarPlane network.

Experiments carried out by Intertain will be in cooperation with the world-wide CineGrid organization which was started to stimulate production, use and exchange of very high-quality digital media across networks. An example is CineGrid being responsible for the live broadcast of the Holland Festival in Amsterdam to a 4,000-seat theatre at the University of California in 2007. The broadcasting resolution was five times better than that of a standard HDTV broadcast.

Commented prof. Henri Bal, ASCI: "DAS-3 is an ambitious High Performance Distributed Computing (HPDC) environment prototyping various novel protocols and systems for the processing and sharing of very large amounts of data on a computational grid. In the large-scale use cases investigated on our system, often much higher bandwidths, lower latencies and more consistent network performance are required than would be typical for enterprise environments. For our project we chose the BLADE RackSwitch equipment specifically based on their rich functionality combined with an excellent price/performance."

"Our success at ASCI is a perfect high profile example of how BLADE's RackSwitch family meets the expectations of users with even the most demanding high bandwidth and application-intensive requirements, enabling them to fully realize the benefits of HPC-class 10GbE networks more affordably and efficiently," said Charles Ferland, vice president of EMEA, BLADE Network Technologies.

About the Advanced School for Computing and Imaging (ASCI)

ASCI is a computer science research school recognized by the Netherlands. It was established by TU Delft, the VU University, the University of Amsterdam, the University of Leiden and the University of Utrecht. In addition to these universities, DAS-3 is funded by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, the VL-e, and The Multimedia Consortium (UvA-MN).

About BLADE's RackSwitch Product Family

BLADE's new RackSwitch G8124 rounds out BLADE's RackSwitch top-of-rack datacenter switch family. This includes the RackSwitch G8100, a low-latency 24-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet switched equipped with CX4 transceivers for low power, low cost and very low latency, and the RackSwitch G8000, a 1-10GbE aggregation switch equipped with 48 Gigabit Ethernet ports and up to four 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports with either SFP+ or CX4 transceivers in a 1U footprint.

About BLADE Network Technologies

BLADE Network Technologies (BLADE) is the leading provider of Gigabit and 10G Ethernet cloud-ready networking solutions for dynamic, enterprise datacenters worldwide. In addition to its innovative OEM blade switches, and SmartConnect with VMready virtualization and BLADEHarmony Manager software, BLADE's "Virtual, Cooler, Easier" RackSwitch family enables "Rackonomics" -- an efficient approach for scaling out datacenter networks to drive down total cost of ownership. BLADE's customers include more than 300 of the Fortune 500 across 26 industry segments, representing nearly 7 million switch ports connecting over 2 million servers and storage systems in datacenters around the globe. Visit: www.bladenetwork.net.

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Source: BLADE Network Technologies, Inc.

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