Obsidian Delivering Trans-Continental Encrypted InfiniBand Link

Obsidian Strategics Inc., developer of Longbow, a series of InfiniBand products featuring range-extension, routing and encryption, announced that NASA will be the first to evaluate the new Longbow E series by connecting NASA Ames Research Center (California) with NASA Goddard (Maryland).

NASA extensively leverages InfiniBand network technology within its capacity and capability High Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure, as well as for high-fidelity visualization and storage over dark-fiber links within the Ames campus at Moffett Field.

“NASA Ames was an early adopter of Longbow technology”, recalls Dr. David Southwell, President of Obsidian Strategics. “We have enjoyed a close working relationship with the HPC networking team, and we’re particularly proud to have seen our Longbow C series enable the Columbia supercomputer expansion project in 2007”.

“To maximize collaboration and operational efficiencies, facilitate the exchange of increasingly large datasets, and offer remote interactive visualization services, there is a general desire within NASA to find ways to expand existing InfiniBand fabrics between NASA facilities”, says Alan Powers, HPC Technical Director, CSC. “We have worked with Obsidian to specify the security characteristics necessary for the development of wide-area InfiniBand devices that would meet or exceed NASA’s network security requirements. Obsidian has responded with the E series, and we are happy to evaluate this product across our 10-Gigabit Ethernet connections between Ames and Goddard. In NASA’s case, security considerations stem as much from the need to protect high-value assets – such as Columbia – as from threats posed by unauthorized access to data.”

Obsidian’s Longbow X series devices are mostly deployed in classified military/intelligence community environments, and as such are designed to inter-operate with military grade Type-1 encryptors that are not commercially available. Obsidian therefore set about developing a new Longbow device capable of supporting range-extended InfiniBand, inter-subnet routing and an open standards based encryption engine using NSA-approved AES algorithms and SHA-1 authentication. The lossless InfiniBand protocol requires all-hardware data paths that support full line-rate operations – all functions operate at 10Gbits/s in this first-generation Longbow product, with sub-microsecond device latency.

Obsidian reports that the Longbow E series will be commercially available in early Q2-2009, contingent on successful trials at NASA.

For information about NASA’s High-End Computing Program