infoTECH Feature

September 25, 2009

Cutting-Edge SSI Compliant Blade Switch Delivered By Voltaire

Voltaire Ltd. reportedly introduced what is presumably the industry’s most advanced Server System Infrastructure compatible InifiniBand switch suited for blade server devices. The product has been made commercially available through select Voltaire OEM associates and resellers, and the company said it will supply flexible, high performance and optimal power management solutions specifically for clustered blade applications.
A prominent supercomputing infrastructure vendor in Asia, Dawning Information Industry Co. has demonstrated the various functionalities of the Voltaire switch at a conference this week. This demonstration was conducted as a part of its launch of the industry’s first fully SSI compliant SSI switch.
Common convention demands that blade computing systems are governed by the SSI Forum. The SSI Forum is a team of members from the server industry who have been tasked with the evolving of server infrastructure standards which are suited to meet the requirements of consumer and the ecosystem they operate in. The latest launch is fully SSI compliant and it also assures compatibility with multiple blade computing systems active in the industry today, including Dawning’s own TC3600 blade system.
With the integration of Voltaire InfiniBand into Dawning’s TC3600 Blade System, the product has been transformed into an effective infrastructure application which is capable of optimizing performance for its mission-critical applications; this integration also helps cut costs and optimizes use of real estate and energy.
“We’re pleased to lead the industry with the world’s first SSI-compliant blade computing system giving our customers the added assurance that their systems are based on industry-wide standards and have proven interoperability,” Nie Hua, vice president of Dawning, said in a statement.
Voltaire’s new 40 Gb/s InfiniBand Blade Switch platform is derived from Voltaire’s design which have garnered industry wide acceptance. It also incorporates 14 internal ports of 40 Gb/s which ensure improved server accessibility and also 16 external QSFP ports which assist in fabric accessibility. The product will also have a port to port latency lower than 100 nanoseconds.
These unique functionalities put together make for a solution that is not cluttered and which more than satisfies the bandwidth and latency needs of a majority of applications. The company also said that the product will find immense utility in data centers due to its energy efficiency-the switch uses only 4 watts of power per port.
 “The Voltaire 40 Gb/s InfiniBand Blade Switch Module delivers high performance and low latency to meet the scalability and energy efficiency requirements of scale-out data centers that are turning to blade computing systems for their IT infrastructure, Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing at Voltaire, said in a statement.

Carolyn John is a Contributor to TMCnet. To read more of her articles, please columnist page.

Edited by Amy Tierney
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