Intel Highlights Infiniband* Solutions Readiness
Six Demos Display Breadth of InfiniBand Architecture Protocols and Industry
Productization Progress
INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 25, 2002 Intel Corporation is highlighting industry
progress on delivering enterprise-ready, InfiniBand* architecture-enabled solutions to data centers. At
IDF, multiple demonstrations of data center solutions are showcasing InfiniBand architecture's inherent
scalability, manageability, and performance capabilities for data center and high performance computing
(HPC) solutions.
"The industry has made great strides in furthering InfiniBand fabric capabilities," said Tom Macdonald,
general manager of the Advanced Components Division in Intel's Enterprise Platforms Group. "These
demonstrations highlight the tremendous advancement that Intel and the industry have made to provide a
seamless transition to InfiniBand architecture across a variety of industry standard protocols. We are
also highlighting the progress software vendors have made in optimizing their applications for InfiniBand
fabrics."
The InfiniBand architecture is an I/O infrastructure technology that simplifies and speeds serverto-server
connections and links to other server-related systems such as remote storage and networking devices.
InfiniBand architecture's easier connectivity, reduced latency, improved bandwidth and enhanced
interoperability increase the performance, reliability and scalability of Intel architecture-based servers.
"2002 will mark the beginning of early testing of InfiniBand fabrics in the data center," says Tom
Bradicich, director, architecture and design, IBM eServer. "With hardware, software and services, IBM
will be working with our customers to evaluate real world configurations of InfiniBand fabric."
Industry Interoperability Demonstration
Intel was joined by 25 leading InfiniBand developers in delivery of a unified InfiniBand fabric
demonstration. Configured in Intel's Interoperability Lab, the demo features multiple industry standard
protocols for transfer of storage, networking, and clustering traffic over a single InfiniBand fabric and
delivers connectivity to Ethernet and Fibre Channel networks.
Clustering Demonstration
The clustering demonstration delivers the first proof point of linear application scalability utilizing
InfiniBand fabric connectivity. The demonstration features a McKinleybased platform, pre-production Intel
InfiniBand HCAs in a clustered configuration. "IBM is pleased to work with Intel to highlight the
unparalleled scalability of DB2 database software* on an Intel platform enabled by the InfiniBand
architecture," said Lauren Flaherty, vice president, marketing, IBM Data Management Solutions. "DB2 on
the InfiniBand architecture will provide data center managers the ability to scale from one single server to
thousands of servers in addition to demonstrating the technology leadership of DB2 within fabric enabled
applications."
Biokey Fingerprint Recognition Demonstration
The Biokey demonstration features an Intel® Itanium® processor based Oracle 9iRAC* server cluster
running Biokey's fingerprint recognition software. The demonstration features dynamic addition of server
resources, or "hot add," via InfiniBand fabric connectivity.
Data Mining Demonstration
The data mining demonstration delivers the first example of proactive failover notification that notifies the
administrator of the rerouting of a downed server in a cluster to another server through CA Unicenter*
enterprise management software and features an Oracle 9iRAC database cluster running SAS
WebHound* and Enterprise Miner* data mining software. Featuring a heterogeneous InfiniBand fabric, the
demonstration also showcases three native InfiniBand storage solutions providing high performance
storage connectivity.
Crash Simulation Demonstration
The National Center for Supercomputing Application (NCSA) A crash simulation demonstration features
the performance advantages that InfiniBand architecture brings to HPC clusters. The demonstration
highlights the seamless integration of InfiniBand fabric connectivity to Message Passing Interface (MPI)
protocol based applications. MPI is one of two industry standard protocols for message based HPC
traffic.
Fujitsu HPC Cluster Demonstration
The Fujitsu Direct Access File System (DAFS) for HPC cluster demonstration features highperformance
DAFS server for 16 nodes HPC cluster utilizing InfiniBand fabric. The demonstration highlights the
integration of DAFS file server and its client, HPC SCore cluster, running distributed NCBA-BLAST
software.
Intel also announced the delivery of device test agents as part of Intel's InfiniBand test development kits.
The device test agents speed testing InfiniBand products for compliance to the InfiniBand specifications.
The test development kits are a supplement to Intel's InfiniBand product development kits that have been
provided to the industry since February 2001.
Intel is one of seven founding companies of the InfiniBand Trade Association, including Compaq, Dell,
HewlettPackard, IBM, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, aiming to deliver products based on a new
common I/O specification to deliver a channel-based, switched fabric technology that the entire industry
can adopt. To generate broad, industry-wide implementation of an InfiniBand infrastructure, Intel and other
key information technology system suppliers are developing a variety of building blocks to support
servers, switches, software and connections between storage and networking devices within an
InfiniBand fabric. More than 220 companies have joined the InfiniBand Trade Association since its launch
in 1999. Additional information about the InfiniBand Trade Association is available at www.infinibandta.org
About IDF
The Intel Developer Forum is the technology industry's premier event for hardware and software
developers. Held worldwide throughout the year, IDF brings together key industry players to discuss
cuttingedge technology and products for PCs, servers, communications equipment, and handheld
clients. For more information on IDF and Intel technology, visit developer.intel.com. |
