QLogic Selected by IBM

Expanding on its OEM agreement with IBM Corp. for quad data rate (QDR) InfiniBand switches, QLogic Corp. announced IBM has integrated QLogic’s 7300 Series 40Gb/sec QDR InfiniBand host channel adapters into its IBM System x servers for high performance computing (HPC) applications.

IBM is the first tier-one OEM to integrate QLogic QDR adapters and will offer them as part of IBM’s latest IBM System Cluster 1350.
 
IBM offers a range of HPC services and products designed to bring more intelligence, automation, integration, and efficiencies to both digital and physical infrastructures. The new QLogic QDR adapters will be offered with QLogic QDR switches as integrated HPC solutions for customers running applications for molecular simulations, computational fluid dynamics, advanced aeronautic design, geospatial imaging and computer-aided engineering. IBM solutions using the Cluster 1350 and the IBM iDataPlex help provide needed business continuity and high availability solutions to facilitate massive supercomputing clusters and grid computing architectures.
 
“This announcement signifies another important design win for QLogic technology,” said Bob Laliberte, senior analyst, ESG. “Earlier this year IBM selected QLogic for high performance converged networking technology for System x and System p; now they have expanded the relationship to include QLogic’s 40Gb QDR InfiniBand technology to empower HPC environments on its System x solutions. QLogic has established itself as a formidable competitor in the HPC space and carries a great deal of momentum into 2010.”
 
Based on the QLogic TrueScale ASIC platform for QDR InfiniBand, the QLogic 7300 Series delivers a higher messaging rate and lower scalable latency than any comparative cluster-interconnect available today. Delivering a message rate of up to 30 million messages per second, the QLogic 7300 Series outperforms competitive QDR adapters by a ratio of more than five to one1.
 
“With today’s moves, QLogic is delivering a trifecta of news to the HPC space,” said Deni Connor, senior analyst, Storage Strategies Now. “The company is effectively  proving that top-quality HPC technology translates into increased business momentum; that OEMs realize the competitive advantages that QLogic enables them to extend to end users in the HPC market, and that other HPC networking vendors just got passed. QLogic has raised the stakes in the HPC connectivity market with its QDR adapters, that are as much as 22 percent faster than competitors and with QDR switches that have over twice the port count, bandwidth and model granularity.”
 
“HPC customers such as universities, government research labs and manufacturers have a growing demand for a cluster interconnect based upon open standards that scales more efficiently with the number of active cores in today’s multi-core compute environment,” said Jesse Parker, vice president and general manager, Network Solutions Group, QLogic. “The addition of 40Gb/sec QDR network connectivity with QLogic’s unparalleled 30 million messages-per-second and low scalable latency supports IBM’s high performance System x mission of increasing productivity, delivering the highest application performance and completing complex simulations faster than any other solution in the market today.”
 
“IBM continues to push the boundaries of integrated solutions for high performance computing, with technology like the IBM System Cluster 1350 and IBM iDataPlex, that provide customers industry-leading performance and energy efficiency,” said Alex Yost, vice president, IBM Systems & Technology Group. “The addition of QLogic 7300 Series QDR adapters will drive new levels of System x-based cluster performance, allowing IBM to deliver pre-tested, easy-to-deploy HPC solutions.”
 
QLogic 7300 Series QDR InfiniBand-to-PCI Express (PCIe) Generation 2 x8 host channel adapters are available in single- and dual-port models. Delivering massive levels of performance, reliability, and scalability, the 7300 Series is the ideal solution for HPC and high-throughput, low-latency enterprise applications.

Key 7300 Series advantages include:
 
Superior Performance

• Performance that scales with the number of cores, resulting in shorter time-to-solution
• Highest message rate in industry: up to 30M messages/sec
• Low latency: 1.0 µs point-to-point
• Bandwidth of 3400MBps unidirectional

Superior Scalability

• Connectionless operation eliminates overhead that wastes valuable CPU resources, and reduces host memory consumption to allow efficient scaling
• Message passing interface (MPI) latency remains low as additional compute resources are added to the cluster
• Lightweight memory footprint at scale

Enhanced Reliability & Power Efficiency

• Simplistic design with fewer components – inherently more reliable than comparative alternatives
• Highly efficient ASIC architecture allows for the lowest power requirements of any QDR-capable IB adapter
• Low power consumption: 6W (typ)