HPC Center Stuttgart Selects Voltaire 40Gb IB Director

Voltaire Ltd. announced that the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) has selected Voltaire 40 Gb/s InfiniBand and Unified Fabric Manager (UFM) software for a supercomputer dedicated to providing HPC services to multiple customers. HLRS chose the Voltaire scale-out fabric solution to help them achieve peak performance, low communication latency and efficient management to deliver services to their end users primarily from the automotive and aerospace industries.

“We operate a dynamic, multi-tenant environment in which maximizing application performance and delivering highly efficient services to our end users – all while preserving power and space – is paramount to our success,” said Prof. Michael Resch, director, HLRS. “Voltaire’s 40 Gb/s InfiniBand and UFM software has delivered truly remarkable results enabling us to provide multiple, secure high performance services over the supercomputer’s consolidated infrastructure.”

“Using UFM software, for the first time we’re able to have a centralized view across the entire fabric and control it in favor of each individual application. This helped us cut application latency in half, while the volume of critical jobs increased two-fold through addressing inefficiencies that were previously undetectable. UFM software also slashed the time needed for certain maintenance tasks from days down to minutes,” Prof. Resch added.

The NEC-designed supercomputer consists of 700 compute nodes based on Intel Xeon X5560 processors and is interconnected with thirty Voltaire Grid Director 4036 switches leveraging 40 Gb/s, QDR InfiniBand technology. The Grid Director 4036 delivers high bandwidth and ultra-low latency to accelerate the performance of applications running on clusters of servers and storage. The switch features a compact design, low power consumption, and redundant, hot-swappable power options enabling easy integration into highly dense and energy efficient data centers.

To optimize the supercomputer’s performance and simplify management of the large, multi-tenant environment, HLRS requested that NEC install Voltaire’s new UFM software. UFM software is the industry’s first comprehensive management software to optimize performance of large server and storage scale-out fabrics. Unlike other management software platforms that are device-oriented and involve tedious manual processes, UFM software provides IT managers with a logical view of their infrastructure. This bridges the traditional gap between servers, applications and fabric elements, creating a more effective and business-oriented way to manage and scale out high-performance fabrics.

UFM software’s monitoring engine provides HLRS the ability to quickly identify errors and network bottlenecks, and analyze root-cause in a matter of seconds instead of hours and days in the past. Notifications are correlated to specific jobs or customers, providing HLRS with the advantage of identifying the problem before the customer even sees it. This is especially valuable given the large size of the HLRS supercomputer which contains hundreds of servers, adapters, cables and ports.

“Voltaire continues to lead the industry in developing innovative switching and software solutions that help customers improve performance and manageability of large, scale-out computing environments,” said Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing, Voltaire. “By using Voltaire 40 Gb/s InfiniBand and UFM software, HLRS is delivering the ultimate performance for its customers while enjoying the benefits of simplified management.”