QLogic Selected by SGI

QLogic Corp. announced an agreement with SGI for highly scalable quad data rate (QDR) InfiniBand switches and directors targeted at the high performance computing (HPC) market.

Under the terms of the agreement, SGI will resell QLogic’s entire portfolio of 12000 Series 40Gb/s QDR InfiniBand switches and directors as part of its CloudRack and Rackable HPC servers and clusters.

SGI HPC solutions are used by the scientific, technical and business communities to solve challenging data-intensive computing, data management and visualization problems. With HPC products that access, analyze, transform, manage, visualize and store very large amounts of data in real-time or near real-time, SGI helps organizations simulate global climate changes, accelerate engineering of new automotive designs, support homeland security initiatives, detect fraud in real-time and gain business intelligence through data mining.

QLogic 12000 Series QDR InfiniBand switches were selected based on their significant advantages, with up to 864 ports, 51.8 terabits per second of aggregate bandwidth and multiple models to choose from for configuration flexibility. The 12000 Series simplifies InfiniBand networking with automated installation, configuration, and monitoring of the fabric. QLogic 12000 Series switches and directors also provide QoS and flexible fabric partitioning that improve the utilization of InfiniBand resources and adapt to the evolving requirements of an organization.

“SGI’s HPC solutions are widely used in scientific, technical and business communities to solve a variety of data-intensive computing challenges,” said Bill Mannel, vice president, Product Management, SGI. “These applications require tremendous computing power as well as extremely fast and efficient data flow. The combination of SGI CloudRack or Rackable HPC servers and QLogic’s performance-leading QDR InfiniBand directors and switches can lead to quicker solutions to some of the world’s most challenging problems.”

“With the highest aggregate bandwidth, highest message rate and lowest latency in the industry, QLogic 12000 Series QDR InfiniBand switches and directors can significantly increase productivity for SGI CloudRack and Rackable cluster users,” said Jesse Parker, vice president and general manager, Network Solutions Group, QLogic. “Superior performance combined with enterprise-friendly ease-of-use makes the 12000 Series ideal for SGI customers running a wide range of computational-intensive applications.”

The QLogic 12000 Series of edge and director switches, based on the company’s TrueScale Architecture, includes several innovations that make the company’s latest technology unparalleled in every respect:

Highest scalability for a modular switch: 18 to 864 ports
Highest ports per 1u of rack space for a director switch: 29.8 ports
Highest leaf port count: 24 ports
Comprehensive fabric management

QLogic 12000 Series QDR InfiniBand Switches
and Directors
The QLogic 12000 Series QDR InfiniBand Switch platform marks a quantum advancement in the InfiniBand switch market. The first InfiniBand switch platform based on QLogic’s own Truescale ASIC technology, the 12000 family ranges from fixed configuration edge switches to fully configurable, modular director class switches. The 12000 Series platform was designed to provide a true enterprise-class solution that scales from the very small to the very large. 12000 Series switches simplify InfiniBand networking with automated installation, configuration, and monitoring of the fabric. QLogic InfiniBand switches provide QoS and flexible fabric partitioning that improve the utilization of InfiniBand resources and adapt to the evolving requirements of an organization.

QLogic 12000 Series QDR InfiniBand director switches offer several significant advantages over comparative products, including 160 percent more connectivity options (864 ports); 100 percent more aggregate bandwidth (51.8 terabits per second); more flexibility and models to choose from (5 models) and the ability to scale the InfiniBand network with precision. Unlike competitive director designs that waste ports networking two chassis together to reach more than 324 ports, the modularly designed QLogic 12000 Series director can scale from as few as 18 ports to the maximum of 864 ports, all on a single switch, without any messy cabling.

QLogic QDR directors and switches for SGI include:

QLogic 12800-360 Director with 648 ports
QLogic 12800-180 Director with 324 ports
QLogic 12800-040 Director with 72 ports