ALISO VIEJO, Calif., July 17, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq:QLGC), a leader in networking for storage and high performance computing, today announced that QLogic(r) InfiniBand host channel adapters (HCAs) are the undisputed leaders based on a new benchmark suite just released by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. (SPEC(r)). The new suite, SPEC MPI2007, measures the performance of parallel computing systems and clusters running message-passing interface (MPI) applications, providing performance metrics that can be used to compare different hardware architectures, inter-connects, processors, memory hierarchy, compilers, and MPI implementations.
QLogic submitted SPEC MPI2007 results on a cluster with Intel Xeon 5160 processors configured similarly to a solution using HCAs from a leading competitor. The QLogic results had a 13 percent better(1) SPECmpiMbase2007 score than the competitive based cluster with 256 cores and 64 nodes. Furthermore, as a measure of interconnect scalability, the QLogic InfiniBand HCAs and switches enabled a 32-core to 256-core speed-up that was 16 percent better(1) than the competitive-based cluster.
"Unlike micro-benchmarks, the SPEC MPI2007 suite is very real-world, measuring performance based on a suite of actual end-user applications," said Amit Vashi, vice president of marketing, QLogic Host Solutions Group. "HPC customers now have further validation that our InfiniBand HCAs outperform competitive products, hands down. Available to customers later this year, QLogic's new InfiniBand DDR HCAs will offer even greater performance advantages, further widening our lead and giving HPC users a larger competitive edge."
QLogic InfiniBand HCAs - The Performance Leader
QLogic InfiniBand adapters deliver industry-leading performance in a cluster interconnect, allowing organizations to gain maximum advantage and return on their investment in clustered systems by driving up the utilization of the computing infrastructure. InfiniBand adapters yield the lowest latency, the highest message rate and highest effective bandwidth of any cluster interconnect available. As a result, organizations relying on clustered systems for critical computing tasks will experience a significant increase in productivity.
SPEC MPI2007 - Real World Benchmark from Non Profit Organization
SPEC is a non-profit corporation that establishes, maintains and endorses standardized benchmarks to measure the performance of the newest generation of high-performance computers. Its membership comprises leading computer hardware and software vendors, universities, and research organizations worldwide. SPEC MPI2007 was developed by SPEC members AMD, Argonne National Lab, Fujitsu Ltd., Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, QLogic, SGI, Sun and the University of Dresden. It supports a wide range of 32- and 64-bit architectures, and is portable across Linux, UNIX and Windows operating systems. A medium-sized data set in SPEC MPI2007 scales up to 512 processors, and SPEC is working on larger data sets.
About QLogic
QLogic is a leading supplier of high-performance storage networking solutions, producing the controller chips, host adapters and fabric switches that are the backbone of storage networks for most Global 2000 corporations. The company delivers a broad and diverse portfolio of products that includes Fibre Channel HBAs, blade server embedded Fibre Channel switches, Fibre Channel stackable switches, iSCSI HBAs, iSCSI routers and storage services platforms for enabling advanced storage management applications. The company is also a leading supplier of InfiniBand switches and InfiniBand host channel adapters for the emerging High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC) market. QLogic products are delivered to small-to-medium businesses and large enterprises around the world via its channel partner community. QLogic products are also powering solutions from leading companies like Cisco, Dell, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, NEC, Network Appliance and Sun Microsystems. QLogic is a member of the S&P 500 Index.
Note: All QLogic-issued press releases appear on the company's website (www.qlogic.com). Any announcement that does not appear on the QLogic website has not been issued by QLogic.
(1) SPEC and SPECmpiM are registered trademarks or trademarks of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 07/17/07. The QLogic result (labeled "Dell, QLogic, ClusterVision, U. of Cambridge HPC Cluster Darwin, QLogic InfiniBand Interconnect"), using 256 cores and 256 MPI ranks had a SPECmpiM_base2007 score of 22.3. The HP result for the HP Proliant BL460c blade Cluster Platform 3000BL product using 256 cores and 256 MPI ranks and a "DDR InfiniBand" interconnect achieved a SPECmpiM_base2007 score of 19.8. DDR Infiniband HCAs are currently all based on silicon from Mellanox. The corresponding SPECmpiM_base2007 scores at 32 cores / 32 MPI ranks were 3.31 for the QLogic U. of Cambridge HPC Cluster submission and 3.40 for the HP Cluster Platform 3000BL submission using Mellanox-based HCAs. This results in a speed-up of 6.73 (= 22.3 / 3.31) for QLogic from 32 to 256 ranks, and 5.82 (= 19.8/3.4) for the interconnect of the HP Cluster Platform 3000BL. Thus, the QLogic InfiniBand interconnect with SDR HCAs produced a 16% better speed-up than the Mellanox-based DDR interconnect.
Disclaimer - Forward Looking Statements
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