Mellanox Selected by IBM

Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. announced that its ConnectX-2 InfiniBand and Ethernet adapters, as well as its IS5000 line of 36, 216, and 648-port fixed and modular 40Gb/s InfiniBand switches, are now available through IBM’s iDataPlex and Intelligent Cluster product lines.

Mellanox’s adapters and switch systems offer IBM customers I/O infrastructure performance and scalability for data centers, Cloud, Web 2.0 and high-performance computing (HPC) environments.

"IBM is delivering solutions that maximize application performance but also meet the requirements for infrastructure economics and green initiatives," said Roland Hagan, VP System X Servers at IBM. "Mellanox adapters and switches complement our Intelligent Cluster and iDataPlex products, giving IBM customers both performance and efficiency benefits that are critical ingredients for increased flexibility and higher return on their compute investment."

ConnectX-2 adapters support an extensive array of networking, clustering, storage, and management protocols. ConnectX-2 InfiniBand adapters are also designed to provide hardware processing of application communications frequently used by scientific simulation for data broadcast, global synchronization and data collection, and new features, such as GPU-Direct, improve application performance on GPU-based clusters by reducing the dependency on the CPU for data movement.

ConnectX-2 EN 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapter cards are VMware vSphere 4 certified, enabling broad interoperability with other operating systems and the ecosystem of OEM supplied servers, switches, gateways and storage systems. In addition, ConnectX-2 EN with RDMA over Ethernet (RoE) delivers up to 1/10th the latency, saves power consumption and delivers improved economics compared to other standards-based 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapter solutions in the market today. According to recent benchmark test results, IBM WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging (LLM) software running over Mellanox 10GigE low-latency Ethernet technology achieved an average latency of four microseconds at 50 thousand messages per second, and six microseconds at one million messages per second – the lowest latency achieved by any messaging delivery product over Ethernet.

Mellanox’s IS5000 line of InfiniBand switches provides the highest-performing fabric solutions. HPC and enterprise data center IT managers using the IS5000 will achieve a greater return on their compute and infrastructure investments through higher CPU productivity due to higher network throughput and availability. The switches were built using Mellanox’s 4th generation InfiniScale IV InfiniBand switch device, and provide up to 40Gb/s fully bidirectional bandwidth per port with industry-leading 100ns port-to-port latency. Networks built with the IS5000 can carry converged traffic with the combination of assured bandwidth and granular quality of service.

"Delivering scalable performance to today’s extensive multi-core systems requires a comprehensive interconnect solution that ensures optimal performance and reliability," said John Monson, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. "Using Mellanox’s industry leading ConnectX-2 Ethernet and InfiniBand adapters and IS5000 family of switches, IBM can deliver industry-leading performance for both Ethernet and InfiniBand applications with greater efficiency and reduced complexity."

Availability
Available now, Mellanox’s line of 40Gb/s InfiniBand adapter cards, switches, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapter cards can be purchased from the IBM website.