Voltaire Speeds Job Runtime for High-Performance Applications

Voltaire Ltd. announced a Vantage 8500 10 GbE switch that enables three times faster job runtime for high-performance applications such as the Open FOAM, an open source computational fluid dynamics software package. The computational simulation that required 24 hours on a 1 GbE configuration can now be completed in very short time period of eight hours using Voltaire’s (News - Alert) 10 GbE.

The standard configuration used to run these high performance applications is Open FOAM simpleFoam.KR running on twelve, 8-core Intel (News - Alert) Xeon X5550 servers connected by Voltaire Vantage 8500 10 GbE switch.

The Voltaire Vantage 8500 switch announced by Voltaire Ltd., serving the scale-out computing needs of data centers, high performance computing and cloud environments is a modular, high-performance, high-density Layer-2 core 10 GbE switch.

The new technology enables Voltaire to serve its clients more efficiently. The beauty of multiple Vantage 8500 switch technology is it can be administered as a single core switch maintaining non-blocking 10 GbE connectivity for up to 3400 servers.

The technology was tested on a cluster of 12 nodes, replicating a real-world commercial HPC scenario where multiple application jobs run concurrently on a large cluster. Using Vantage 8500, a variety of jobs running simultaneously on four to 12 nodes were performed more efficiently. This highlights the ability of Vantage 8500 switch to improve functioning of multiple applications operating on a single cluster.

Commenting on the announcement, Asaf Somekh (News - Alert), vice president of marketing for Voltaire, said, "A 3X improvement in job runtime is significant to customers in manufacturing or any industry."

This benchmark proves that environments that traditionally use 1 GbE can gain significant performance improvements by migrating to 10 GbE. Moreover, the economics are becoming increasingly more attractive as the availability of 10 GbE LAN on Motherboard (LOM) dramatically reduces overall networking costs, added Somekh.

The collection of Vantage 10GbE switches can be viewed in booth 3139 at Sc’10 this week in New Orleans, La.

Voltaire was in news recently when its chief executive officer and chairman of the Board, Ronnie Kenneth, and its chief financial officer, Josh Siegel, presented at the Merriman Capital Investor Summit in New York City. The conference was held on Nov. 16, 2010, at the InterContinental Times Square Hotel.

Vinti Vaid is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Vinti's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jaclyn Allard