Voltaire, a leading provider of high performance InfiniBand solutions, today announced that the ERC at Mississippi State University has selected Voltaire's advanced InfiniBand connectivity solutions to support a 192-node, diskless IBM server cluster, the largest diskless InfiniBand server cluster built to date. Voltaire's InfiniBand solutions, featuring advanced I/O and management capabilities, enable advanced computing facilities like the ERC to significantly improve the performance and efficiency of server clusters for high performance computing (HPC) applications. "The ERC has been pioneering advanced clustered computing networks for sixteen years and is widely recognized for our important research and development initiatives and forward-looking adoption of next-generation technologies," said Trey Breckenridge, HPC Resources and Operations Administrator, Mississippi State University ERC. "With the power, performance and scalability of Voltaire's InfiniBand switches and the robust functionality of the VoltaireVision management software, we are well enabled to achieve significant throughput and performance gains for our IBM server cluster and extend our research leadership and expertise to a new tier." "We have been working closely with Voltaire to deliver superior InfiniBand clustering solutions to HPC and data center customers," said Dave Turek, vice president of Deep Computing, IBM. "As an early leader in InfiniBand technology, Voltaire's solutions have now reached a level of maturity that is encouraging rapid adoption within the industry." The ERC's cluster is comprised of 192 dual Xeon processor IBM eServer xSeries x335 servers and connected by Voltaire's InfiniBand solutions to deliver peak performance of 2.3 TFlops. The ERC is using Voltaire's ISR 9600 InfiniBand switches embedded with VoltaireVision management software, Voltaire HCAs and high performance software stack for Linux to support its advanced MPI-based applications. MPI Software Technology, Inc. is providing the ERC with its MPI/Pro InfiniBand-aware MPI implementation for the cluster. "As one of the top university supercomputing sites in the nation, the ERC is at the forefront of computational science and engineering for key industry and government initiatives," said Arun Jain, vice president of marketing, Voltaire. "This announcement is further validation of the strength and maturity of our proven, high performance InfiniBand solutions for HPC applications. Our industry-leading expertise and close alliance with IBM enables us to offer comprehensive support for IBM server clusters to ensure dramatic performance improvements at a reduced cost." Prior to deploying Voltaire's InfiniBand solutions, the ERC used Myrinet and GigaBit Ethernet for its cluster interconnect. The ERC selected Voltaire's standards-based, high performance InfiniBand solutions to replace its current connectivity infrastructure to gain accelerated throughput and enhanced overall performance for its key supercomputing initiatives. The ERC is using the following Voltaire products: - Three Voltaire ISR 9600 (96 ports) InfiniBand switches in a full bi-sectional bandwidth configuration - 192 Voltaire HCA 400 dual-port, 4X InfiniBand host channel adapters - Voltaire high performance software stack for Linux - Embedded VoltaireVision management software for advanced fabric management Voltaire's ISR 9600 is the highest port-count (96 ports) to be certified by the InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA), distinguishing it as the most scalable, certified InfiniBand switch on the market today. Voltaire offers a complete family of InfiniBand solutions for HPC applications that balance high-performance hardware with a production-ready, standards-based software stack for HPC clusters and enterprise data centers. The result is unmatched performance within InfiniBand clusters and seamless connectivity with the existing infrastructure.