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InfiniCon Systems Announces Breakthrough Performance Levels From InfiniBand-Based Systems

Posted on: Tuesday, 26 August 2003, 06:00 CDT

KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 26, 2003--

Results For Fabric/Cluster Computing Establish New Benchmarks

And Design Points for Switching, Bandwidth, and I/O Rates

InfiniCon Systems, the premier provider of shared I/O and switching solutions for next-generation server networks, today announced that its InfinIO(TM) family of products - leveraging InfiniBand architecture - has attained unprecedented performance results in a series of key tests measuring application latency, bandwidth throughput, scalability, and I/O throughput. These test results provide the most comprehensive indicators yet of an InfiniBand-based system's value to enhance CPU clustering, accelerate application throughput, and drive server traffic to standard Fibre Channel and Ethernet networks.

Test Scenarios

InfiniCon's test bed systems consist of standard servers from Dell, IBM, and Appro, and standardized storage and networking systems from a variety of vendors. Industry-standard and accepted performance tools were used to determine throughput results, such as the Chariot benchmarking tool, the published Ohio State University benchmarking tools for High Performance Computing (HPC) testing, and protocol analyzers.

In multiple benchmark scenarios, various performance parameters were measured including application latency for both HPC and datacenter applications over an InfiniBand fabric; bandwidth throughput for InfiniBand-attached servers across both Ethernet and InfiniBand networks; and I/O throughput from InfiniBand-attached servers to Fibre Channel SANs. Multiple servers were configured using InfiniCon's InfiniServ(TM) 7000 Host Channel Adapter, which offers servers a true 10Gb/second link to network resources. The servers were configured in a fabric based upon InfiniCon's InfinIO 7000 Shared I/O and Clustering System, the industry's first system to integrate InfiniBand, Ethernet, and Fibre Channel switching and I/O support in a single platform. Fibre Channel storage and Ethernet clients were added through the InfinIO 7000.

Test Results: Sub 6 Microseconds Latency for HPC Applications

In HPC applications using the industry-standard MPI API for system-to-system communications, the InfiniCon systems were able to achieve end-to-end latencies of 5.5 microseconds, and prove capable of driving bandwidth above 880MB/second on a single network connection. When configured to support standard IP-based applications using the industry-standard IP-over-InfiniBand (IPoIB) protocol, applications drove data in excess of 350MB/second for a single link, compared to an average of 65MB/second for a Gigabit Ethernet link.

Test Results: 150,000 I/Os Per Second for Fibre Channel Applications

Most impressive were the I/O rates when driving traffic to standard Fibre Channel and Ethernet networks. Using standard Intel-based servers, InfiniCon's VFx Fibre Channel Gateway line card demonstrated performance in excess of 150,000 I/Os per second over two 2Gb/s Fibre Channel ports, providing enough I/O throughput on a single card to support over twenty average servers. InfiniCon's VEx Ethernet Gateway line card demonstrated similarly impressive results, delivering over 350MB/second throughput over 3 GbE ports - enough for dozens of commodity servers to share.

"InfiniBand was designed from the ground up for high-performance, but there has been a looming question of how it would really perform when put to the test," stated Jamie Gruener, senior analyst for Yankee Group. "InfiniCon's results indicate that, when coupled with an intelligent design and robust software, both InfiniBand and the concept of shared I/O are primed for datacenter-type workloads."

"Our InfinIO systems deliver comprehensive, across the board performance in latency and bandwidth over InfiniBand, Ethernet, and Fibre Channel. These results surpass any other system available today," stated Todd Matters, chief technology officer of InfiniCon Systems. "Through our software and system architecture, we deliver these advantages seamlessly to customers, enabling them to realize greater cost performance benefits, without the management headaches that come when application changes are required."

InfinIO Architecture: Incorporating Best-of-Breed Technologies

InfinIO's impressive results were attained in part because of industry-leading performance derived from components provided by key InfiniCon technology partners.

"At Agilent Technologies, we focus on producing high-performance silicon that offers business benefits to a broad range of customers, and our partnership with InfiniCon exemplifies this," said Dr. Hungwen Li, vice president and general manager of Agilent's RedSwitch Division. "InfiniCon is a leader in leveraging InfiniBand technology to produce high-performance, high-availability systems for the data center."

"We have been working with InfiniCon to optimize the performance profile of InfiniBand to allow it to fulfill its promise as the most powerful interconnect available for standard computing," stated Eyal Waldman, CEO of Mellanox Technologies. "These results clearly demonstrate the power of our InfiniHost HCA silicon offering when delivered by a talented systems and software partner."

About InfiniCon Systems

With its award-winning InfinIO(TM) Architecture - the first systems solution based on InfiniBand to deliver affordable 10Gbps networking to commodity servers while integrating seamlessly with existing Fibre Channel and Ethernet networks - InfiniCon Systems provides the high-performance, low-latency infrastructure required to enable next-generation data centers.

Leveraging the switching and shared I/O capabilities of the InfinIO platform, IT organizations can cluster server resources together to create larger, more powerful computing environments; provision resources to match business demands; and slash operational costs for server deployments through greatly simplified connectivity to distributed storage and networking applications.

InfiniCon, headquartered in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, is a member of the InfiniBand Trade Association, the Storage Network Industry Association, the Direct Access File System (DAFS) Collaborative, and the Server Blade Trade Association. For additional information, visit www.infinicon.com.

This press release includes forward-looking statements, which include, but are not limited to, statements regarding InfiniCon Systems' product offerings, market position, customer base and growth in demand for InfiniBand-based products. These statements involve risks and uncertainty, and actual results could differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes its expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, no assurances can be given that such expectations will prove correct.

InfiniBand/SM is both a trademark and a service mark. It is used as a trademark to designate the technology and products incorporating the technology being developed by the InfiniBand Trade Association; and it is also used as a service mark to designate the association services of the InfiniBand Trade Association.

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