Tomen Receives Order from Fujitsu for InfiniBandTM Switching Systems for World's Fastest Linux-Based Supercomputer
2003-11-11
Tomen Corporation announced today that the company has received an order from Fujitsu Ltd. to deliver a high-speed computer interconnect system conforming to InfiniBand™ - the next generation interface specification for communications among multiple computers or between computers and peripheral equipment.
The system equipment is to be installed for the development of World Fastest Linux™ PC Cluster System which has been awarded to Fujitsu Ltd. by Japan's Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, known as Riken, for a supercomputing-grade cluster of Linux™ computers with a total of 2,048 CPUs capable of achieving 12.4 teraflops of computing performance. This giant Linux™ cluster is deployed mainly for bio-informatics applications.
The sale of this system will represent around $1.5 million to Tomen, with a targeted turnover of around $8.0 million for the next year.
The system equipment for which Tomen has received an order is the InfinIO 3000 series, manufactured by InfiniCon Systems Inc. (Pennsylvania, USA). Tomen is a distributor for InfiniCon Systems Inc. both in Japan and China. The product is state of the art equipment that houses 32 InfiniBand ports (4X port, 1X is 2.5Gbps) in its 1U (one 44.5mm unit in 19 inch rack), which is the highest port density in the world in this class of equipment.
The equipment incorporates maximum 12 high-speed InfiniBand switch LSIs made by Agilent Technologies Inc. The maximum bandwidth is said to be 640 Gbps. It has redundant power and fan units so that the maintenance can be performed without stopping the operation. Not only can the system be used for high performance technical computing but also it can be used to build highly available infrastructure computer systems for mission critical business transactions.
The received order consists of a total of 48 switch chassis and 1,024 InfiniBand cables with which a total of 512 PC servers are connected in parallel at 20 Gbps bi-directional signal speed.
InfiniBand fabric system can reduce the CPU usage for data communications dramatically by implementing the highly reliable communication protocol on its hardware when it is used in server to server communications. Hence, the CPU can be more dedicated to the calculation work. Agilent's InfiniBand LSI, which is used in the core of the switch fabric, has shown the lowest switching latency (110 nanosecond) in the industry, which resulted in achieving fabric latency of less than 1 microsecond per data path.
Recently, PC-based cluster systems have become popular globally for high-performance technical computing, especially in academic and research institutions as the performance can be scaleable according to the number of processors. In the same time, it is said that high level computing knowledge and sophistication is required to operate the PC-based cluster system.
It is also said that the capability of interconnect is saturated due to the rapid increment of CPU's performance.
Fujitsu's deep knowledge in the large scaled high performance parallel computing environment and advanced InfiniCon's InfiniBand technology solve the bottleneck problem of PC-based large-scale cluster system. The deployment of the large scaled PC Cluster System will be conducted by Riken, representing use of this technology out of an academic setting and more widely into a practical, business-computing environment in the large. Moreover, this deal represents the kind of creative activity and practical application of new technologies that will drive revenue growth at Tomen in the years ahead.
About Tomen Corporation
Tomen is an international company with 80 offices worldwide and is headquartered in Japan. It is listed on the Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya stock exchanges. It maintains a leadership position in foodstuffs, textiles, electronics and computer networking equipment, chemicals, energy and plant project business fields, where it seeks to provide innovative services to its customers and business partners. Tomen Group's Tomen Electronics (www.tomen-ele.co.jp) and Shanghai Hong Ri International Electronics Co., Ltd., are the leading distributors of semiconductors in Japan and China.
About Fujitsu Corporation (www.fujitsu.com)
Fujitsu is a leading provider of customer-focused IT and communications solutions for the global marketplace. Pace-setting technologies, highly reliable computing and telecommunications platforms, and a worldwide corps of systems and services experts uniquely position Fujitsu to deliver comprehensive solutions that open up infinite possibilities for its customers' success. Headquartered in Tokyo, Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 4.6 trillion yen (US$38billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2003.
About InfiniCon Systems, Inc. (www.infinicon.com)
InfiniCon is the premier provider of shared I/O and switching solutions for next-generation server networks. The company is an active member of the InfiniBand Trade Association, the Storage Network Industry Association, the Direct Access File System (DAFS) Collaborative, and the Server Blade Trade Association.
About Agilent Technologies Inc. (www.agilent.com)
Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A) is a global technology leader in communications, electronics and life sciences. The company's 35,000 employees serve customers in more than 110 countries. Agilent had net revenues of $6 billion in fiscal year 2002.
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