QLogic With New QDR 40Gb IB Switches 12000

QLogic Corp. announced the QLogic 12000 Series of 40Gb quad data rate (QDR) InfiniBand switches. The comprehensive family of blade, edge and director switches is based on the new QLogic TrueScale switch ASIC platform. The QLogic 12000 Series represents a new class of InfiniBand switches with a number of industry breakthroughs including the highest port count for a rack mount switch, lowest power-per-port, highest performance for a rack mount switch and higher network utilization with vFabric(. The 12000 Series joins QLogic QDR InfiniBand adapters to make up the industry’s first family of end-to-end QDR solutions and establishes new standards for cluster performance, scalability and network utilization. These innovations enable faster time-to-solutions for high performance computing (HPC) users running cluster applications such as oil & gas exploration, weather forecasting, auto design and financial modeling.

  QLogic 12800

Listed below are key features and benefits of the QLogic 12000 Series switches based on QLogic TrueScale ASIC technology – the new checklist for best-in-class InfiniBand switches.

• Highest port count for a rack mount switch – 864 ports
• Highest scalability for a rack mount switch – 18 to 864 ports
• Highest aggregate bandwidth for a rack mount switch – 51.8 Tb/s
• Highest ports per 1u of rack space for a director switch – 29.8 ports per 1u
• Lowest power per port for a director switch – 7.8 Watts per port
• Future gateway capabilities to access the fastest data and storage networks – 10Gb Ethernet and 8Gb Fibre Channel
• Highest network utilization with QLogic vFabric, including adaptive routing and QoS
• Easiest to use with wizard-based installation, automated discovery, automated configuration and self monitoring

"InfiniBand technology continues to play an increasingly important role in the future of HPC clusters," said Earl Joseph, program vice president, High-Performance Computing, IDC. "Many traditional and emerging HPC users are expected to move towards InfiniBand technologies and will look at the potential for QDR InfiniBand technology, such as the new QLogic 12000 Series, to leverage its 40Gb InfiniBand speeds to build more powerful, small clusters and to scale large clusters even higher."

"Traditional HPC users are building massive clusters while new workgroup cluster applications are rapidly emerging," said Jesse Parker, vice president and general manager, QLogic Network Solutions Group. "The QLogic 12000 Series is a new class of switches designed to scale cost-effectively from workgroup to Top 500."

"This new breed of InfiniBand switches with QDR speeds and intelligent features can give customers quicker times-to-solutions," said Herbert Schultz, director of marketing for IBM Deep Computing. "The QLogic 12000 Series offers the performance and scalability to meet the needs of a long list of demanding HPC applications."

"QLogic has made great efforts to maximize cluster efficiency in the design of its 12000 Series QDR InfiniBand switches," said Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst, StorageIO. "Features such as vFabric, adaptive routing and QoS allow HPC users to bypass conflicts when implementing heterogeneous solutions on the same InfiniBand fabric."

QLogic NETtrack Alliance Program:
Certified Interoperability & Optimized Performance
Leading HPC vendors have pledged to ensure their solutions are interoperable and optimized for performance with QLogic 12000 Series switches. NETtrack partners who have committed to certify interoperability of their HPC products with the QLogic 12000 Series include: AMD, ANSYS, CD-adapco, Clustercorp, Corning Cable Systems, DataDirect Networks, LSI Corporation, Network Equipment Technologies, Obsidian Strategics, Panasas, PANDUIT, Platform Computing, RAID Incorporated, RNA networks, SIMULIA, Symmetric Computing, Terascala, Texas Memory Systems and Zarlink Semiconductor.

NETtrack partners will be able to test and certify their applications with QLogic 12000 Series switches at the NETtrack Developer Center using the center’s 32-node/256-core clusters based on either Intel’s SR1560SF servers or AMD’s Colfax CX1266-N2 servers.

InfiniBand Networks powered by QLogic
QLogic offers a comprehensive end-to-end portfolio of InfiniBand networking products for HPC including QDR host channel adapters (HCAs), QDR multi-protocol director and edge switches, and the necessary software to install, operate, and maintain high performance fabrics. Delivering the industry’s highest message rate, lowest MPI latency and highest effective bandwidth, QLogic InfiniBand adapters enable MPI and TCP applications to scale to thousands of nodes with unprecedented price-performance. The most comprehensive and flexible HPC cluster interconnect fabric solutions on the market, QLogic QDR InfiniBand switches incorporate the industry’s only management tools that enable an administrator to install and boot an InfiniBand fabric in minutes, helping to satisfy the growing demand for high performance computational clusters and grids.