For HPC Tera-100, CEA Selects DataDirect Via Bull…

DataDirect Networks Inc. (DDN) announced that the French Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission (CEA: Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives) will utilize DDN’s new Storage Fusion Architecture as the high-speed file storage foundation for its new Tera-100 supercomputer developed in partnership with Bull.

To support the requirements of the Tera-100 system, the most powerful system ever designed and developed in Europe, CEA and Bull have selected DDN’s new SFA10000 system to power the world’s fastest POSIX file system and deliver over 300GB/s of single file system performance.

This announcement represents a continuation of the partnership between DDN, CEA and Bull which was formed in 2005 from the deployment of a leadership-class storage system for the CEA Tera-10 machine. At over 100GB/s of Lustre File System performance, the Tera-10 storage cluster shattered all conventional storage performance records at the time and was the first of many scalable DDN storage systems deployed by Bull to various divisions within the CEA. Since that time, DDN technology has received worldwide acceptance as the trusted platform for scalable high performance computing – today delivering more bandwidth to the top500.org ranked listing of supercomputers than all other storage technologies combined.

At 300GB/s, the SFA10000-based Tera-100 storage system today earns the designation as the world’s fastest HPC storage system, a record previously held by the US Department of Energy Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and also achieved using DDN HPC-optimized storage technology. By the end of the year DDN will have deployed three Lustre File Systems with over 240GB/sec performance based on an array of implementations thus showing the scalability and flexibility of our technology.

"CEA required a focused partner who understands the unique challenges of being at the forefront of building petascale storage systems," said Jacques-Charles Lafoucrière, High Performance Systems Division Leader at CEA. "To achieve the landmark performance that our Tera-100 system requires, CEA and Bull selected DataDirect Networks and their Storage Fusion Architecture. DDN, Bull and CEA have enjoyed a long and rich partnership focused on furthering HPC storage and state-of-the-art computing. More than just a general-purpose IT storage company, DDN continually demonstrates an acute understanding of what is required to achieve success."

The SFA10000 is a new architecture from DDN, designed from the ground-up to address the evolving data storage requirements of multi-core, scalable computation. The system may deliver over an unrivaled 12 GB/sec of read and write performance and over one million IOPS to handle any workload. With 60GB/s of fully-balanced, non-blocking internal bandwidth and the ability to manage up to 1,200 storage devices (HDD/SSD), the SFA10000 is three times more scalable than competing systems and optimized for online and nearline storage environments. HPC-optimized features include native file and application hosting, an active/active redundant design, high-speed mirrored cache, intelligent performance optimization, SATAssure data protection, fully-RAIDed enclosures and 8GB Fibre Channel and 40GB InfiniBand host-port options.

In recognition of this innovative design, HPCwire recently awarded DataDirect Networks with the 2009 Editor’s Choice Award for the Best HPC Storage Product.

"This announcement is a validation of DDN’s focus on petascale storage which we announced to the HPC industry in 2006," said Alex Bouzari, Co-Founder and CEO of DataDirect Networks. "Without the distractions of general purpose IT storage business, DDN is the only open-platform storage company principally focused on enabling the computational scientist. DDN is pleased to partner again with CEA and Bull to continue to push the boundaries of petascale I/O and the science which will benefit from these new capabilities."

Fabio Gallo, Vice-President, Extreme Computing Solutions, Bull, said: "We are pleased with DDN’s Storage Fusion Architecture and the balanced levels of performance which is ideally matched to the requirements of the bullx HPC cluster technology. Our partnership with DDN and CEA on the Tera-100 initiative will enable new insight into nuclear physics."