FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Voltaire Delivers Peak Performance for High Performance Clusters and
Grids with Scalable Fabric Management Software
New Commercial-Grade, Server-Based Software Eases Deployment and Management of
Large InfiniBand Fabrics
SC|06, TAMPA, Florida and BILLERICA, Mass. – November 15, 2006 – Voltaire, the
worldwide leader in grid backbone solutions, today announced new highly scalable fabric
management software that delivers peak performance for high performance clusters and grids.
GridVision™ Enhanced is a server-based version of Voltaire’s field-proven InfiniBand fabric
management software that delivers high performance and speeds deployment of large InfiniBand
fabrics consisting of hundreds or thousands of servers. Using GridVision Enhanced, users can
bring up a multi-thousand node cluster in less than one minute.
“Robust and scalable fabric management software is a critical element for grids and
supercomputers – such as those in the Top500 -- that are scaling to hundreds and thousands of
servers. With petaflop-scale computing in sight, it is important to be able to scale both hardware
and software performance,” said Patrick Guay, senior vice president of marketing, Voltaire.
“GridVision Enhanced offers all of the mission critical tools required for an InfiniBand cluster in
a commercial-grade, host-based solution that enables the utmost scalability and performance for
large fabrics.”
GridVision Enhanced incorporates a highly scalable subnet manager, which is a required
component for InfiniBand fabrics that manages operational tasks such as routing, addressing and
fabric initialization. In addition to subnet management, the software enables better fabric
utilization and performance through advanced routing, central provisioning and configuration,
and hierarchical root cause and analysis tools. For larger clusters and grids, as the environment
scales, reliability, scalability and performance become increasingly important. Using powerful
server platforms to host the software, GridVision Enhanced provides faster configuration and
response time for very large fabrics, simplified integration with standard Linux software tools
and new routing algorithms.
Scalability and Performance for Top500-Class Clusters
GridVision Enhanced encompasses all of the performance and scalability features required by
Top500-class clustered supercomputers. The new host-based software encompasses the plug and
play features of Voltaire’s switch-based fabric management software which is used in some of
the world’s largest InfiniBand fabrics including Top500 supercomputers at Japan’s Tokyo
Institute of Technology and the U.S. Department of Defense. By running on a host instead of on
the switch, GridVision Enhanced further accelerates the speed of all fabric management related
tasks including fabric initialization or “bring up”, troubleshooting and accessing critical
operational information. GridVision Enhanced easily scales from a few to thousands of nodes in
both stand alone and highly available redundant configurations and can bring up a multi-
thousand node cluster in less than one minute.
As a standalone software package, GridVision Enhanced manages heterogeneous fabrics that
may include InfiniBand switches from multiple vendors. It also can access the advanced device
management capabilities of Voltaire’s InfiniBand-based hardware solutions including all
managed switches and Ethernet and Fibre Channel router modules for fast I/O and virtualization.
Complements Service Oriented Infrastructure Software for Grid Computing
GridVision Enhanced is available as a standalone software package and is also included as part
of Voltaire’s recently-introduced GridVision Enterprise service oriented infrastructure (SOI)
management software. GridVision Enterprise automatically maps the relationships between
application requirements and the physical or virtual data center environment consisting of
servers, storage and networks to create a logical and highly efficient data center. Employing an
innovative abstracted object model, an intuitive graphical user interface and an open web
services API, GridVision Enterprise integrates with leading server and storage virtualization
solutions, as well as provisioning and scheduling tools, creating a single, logical data center
environment consisting of both physical and virtual resources. The software enables true
automation of repetitive IT tasks associated with network, server and storage provisioning to
deliver unprecedented efficiency. More information about GridVision Enterprise is available at
http://www.voltaire.com/Products/Grid_Vision.
GridVision Enhanced will be available in early 2007.
About Voltaire
Voltaire is the worldwide leader in grid backbone solutions for networked computing in the next
generation data center. Voltaire’s integrated family of switching hardware and network
virtualization software delivers the high-performance, intelligent backbone for grid computing
architectures. Leveraging the InfiniBand standard, Voltaire solutions offer improved
performance, utilization and scalability across compute clusters, storage and IP networks.
Voltaire solutions are available from major systems vendors and integrators. More information
about Voltaire is available at www.voltaire.com or by calling 1-800-865-8247.
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All product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Contact:
Christy Lynch
Voltaire
(617) 794-1362
christyl@voltaire.com