February 13, 2009 -- Voltaire announced that it will design a high-performance 40 Gb/s InfiniBand switch module for the IBM BladeCenter platform. The switch module will enable additional benefits for IBM BladeCenter in both the enterprise data center and high performance computing (HPC) markets. The forthcoming IBM custom switch is expected to deliver 100% faster InfiniBand connectivity to accelerate performance of applications running on BladeCenter.
"We recently built the world's fastest computer, and Voltaire was a big contributor. That's a great example of how IBM consistently provides our blade customers with the latest in networking technologies to allow them to extract maximum performance from their systems," says Alex Yost, vice president, IBM BladeCenter. "The addition of Voltaire-designed, 40 Gb/s, QDR InfiniBand switching to BladeCenter will provide an ideal platform for clients with high-performance needs."
According to the companies, the combined platform will better support the performance requirements of enterprise applications for virtualization and enterprise resource planning and, because of the high bandwidth and I/O throughput, will greatly simplify large-scale HPC deployments. In addition to performance and scalability, the Voltaire switch module will boost the BladeCenter's energy efficiency by requiring very low power per port, making it a more energy efficient solution than competitive bladed systems using 10 Gigabit Ethernet for the interconnect.
"Voltaire solutions are built to deliver the application acceleration and scalability demands of data centers and HPC centers while also delivering the best price performance and energy efficiency of any high-performance interconnect," comments Ronnie Kenneth, chairman and CEO, Voltaire. "IT organizations with environments ranging from data warehousing and virtualization to industries including financial services, manufacturing, life sciences, government and education will achieve new levels of application performance with IBM BladeCenter and its new, 40 Gb/s InfiniBand switch."
The joint platform is expected to be available through IBM in mid-2009.
On the Web:
www.voltaire.com