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Mellanox ConnectX™ IB InfiniBand Mezzanine Adapters and Switches Accelerate the New HP BladeSystem c3000 Enclosure

Mellanox announced that the company’s 20Gb/s ConnectX IB InfiniBand mezzanine adapter cards and switch blades provide the optimal low-latency, high-performance interconnect for the new HP BladeSystem c3000 enclosure targeting midsize companies looking to realize the cost benefits of a bladed environment and the performance advantages of InfiniBand.

According to IDC's most recent Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker released in August 2007, blade servers continue to be the fastest growing segment of the server market with 1.3 million units expected to ship in 2007 growing to 3.2 million units in 2010 -- a unit CAGR of 35%. HP is noted as the leading blade server vendor with 47 percent unit market share, primarily based on shipments of its BladeSystem c-Class infrastructure. Mellanox’s 20Gb/s InfiniBand interconnect products continue to be available for the HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosure in addition to the new c3000 enclosure.

“When it comes to the infrastructure behind their business, our customers deserve affordable technology that is right-sized for them – solutions that are not only powerful, but practical,” said Mark Potter, vice president, BladeSystem Division, HP. “The Mellanox ConnectX IB InfiniBand products further build on the leadership I/O capabilities of the HP BladeSystem c7000, providing superior connectivity that enables increased productivity at a price/performance unseen before by mid-market customers and businesses with small IT sites and remote offices.”

• Press Release

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Voltaire and Synopsys Introduce High-Performance Compute Solution to Reduce Cycle Time for Semiconductor Mask Manufacturing

Voltaire and Synopsys announced they are developing a high-performance compute (HPC) cluster solution for semiconductor mask data-preparation (MDP) applications. The HPC solution, which consists of the Synopsys CATS® MDP solution running on a high-performance compute infrastructure with Voltaire InfiniBand and DataDirect Networks’ storage, reduced MDP turnaround time by up to 4X compared to clusters using Gigabit Ethernet.

With advanced semiconductor design files rapidly approaching one terabyte (1TB) in size, controlling data processing efficiency and cycle time has emerged as a top challenge for the industry. The greatest impact is felt in the design data to manufacturing data translation step – also known as mask data prep. Synopsys, supplier of the industry-leading MDP solution CATS, is focused on developing new MDP solutions to help customers reduce design-to-mask data cycle time. Toward this end, Synopsys has teamed with Voltaire, other external suppliers and internal Synopsys IT resources to deliver next-generation, high-performance MDP compute solutions that are highly scalable and reliable.

Originally developed for Synopsys in-house testing and now available to customers, the new HPC solution delivers high-performance file I/O using the Lustre® parallel file system from Cluster File Systems (CFS), DataDirect Networks’ S2A (Silicon Storage Appliance) and the Voltaire Grid Director™ 10 Gigabits/second InfiniBand switches, which use Mellanox Technologies’ (NASDAQ: MLNX, TASE: MLNX) InfiniBand silicon solutions. Using the HPC solution, CATS has demonstrated up to a 4X improvement over Gigabit Ethernet-based solutions. In one case, a job was completed in four hours instead of the 16 hours typically required.

“We are excited to work with our partners to help bring this solution to market,” said Thad Omura, vice president of product marketing at Mellanox Technologies, the InfiniBand silicon and HCA supplier that worked with Voltaire and Synopsys to develop and tune the optimal InfiniBand configuration for the solution. “InfiniBand’s remote direct memory access (RDMA) feature that bypasses system processors during I/O and writes directly to disk is a key differentiator for this solution and brings new levels of performance to EDA tools.”

• Press Release
• Case Study - Speeding EDA Design Cycles
• Synopsys Solution Brief

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Mellanox and Verari Systems Demonstrate InfiniBand Converged Wire Benefits in Server Blades with VMware

Mellanox announced that a joint virtual infrastructure demonstration with Verari Systems® consisting of VMware Infrastructure, Verari Systems’ BladeRack®2 blade server chassis and server blades, and native InfiniBand storage from LSI® using LSI’s 6498 Storage System connected via Mellanox InfiniBand adapters, delivers compelling I/O cost and power benefits by replacing multiple Gigabit Ethernet NICs and Fibre Channel Adapters with a single Mellanox 20Gb/s InfiniBand adapter. This demonstration is a bellwether of the adoption of unified InfiniBand I/O in the rapidly growing virtualized data center market used to solve both cost and power issues in IT infrastructure, especially in blade server deployments.

“We expect the install-base of virtualized machines to heavily grow over the next five years, reaching 15 to 20 million by 2012 from the current number of an estimated 3 million*,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. “The combination of multi-core CPU and blade server deployments, along with enhancements in virtualization software, will increase the need for higher bandwidth and unified I/O technologies.”

InfiniBand-based virtualized blade servers incorporating Mellanox 20Gb/s adapters provide data centers with optimal total cost of ownership and the following features:

• Reduce I/O cost 40 – 50%
• Reduce I/O power ~30%
• Reduce I/O real estate needs in blade servers through I/O consolidation
• Maintain interoperability with existing LAN and SAN infrastructures
• Maintain compatibility with virtual machine-based applications and virtual infrastructure management software

The InfiniBand drivers for virtual infrastructure solutions based on VMware ESX Server are being developed as part of the VMware Community Source program. These OFED-based drivers ensure broad interoperability with the ecosystem of OEM, OSV, ISV suppliers of InfiniBand solutions. Legacy Ethernet NIC and SCSI HBA interfaces are preserved in the virtual machines enabling existing OS and applications qualified for VMs to run seamlessly over InfiniBand. Similarly, SAN and LAN I/O resource provisioning transparency is preserved...(more)

• Press Release
• Mellanox and Verari VMware Demo Brief
• Mellanox VMware Demo Brief using the HP BladeSystem c-class
• White Paper: I/O Virtualization Using Mellanox InfiniBand and Channel I/O Virtualization (CIOV) Technology

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Download Presentations from the InfiniBand Low Latency Technical Forum 2007

The InfiniBand Trade Association and the OpenFabrics Alliance hosted the second annual InfiniBand Low Latency Technical Forum September 17 in San Francisco. 

The one-day conference began with a keynote from Jacob Hall, product management, platform design and data center manager of Wachovia. ISVs, end users and vendors from Alexa Internet, Cisco, Intel, Mellanox, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oracle, QLogic, Stanford Manufacturing Group, Synopsys, Voltaire, W.L. Gore & Associates, Wombat Financial Software and Z Research also spoke at the conference.

Click here to view all the presentations from the technical forum.

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