Press Releases

2004

FOUR OF THE WORLD’S 15 FASTEST SUPERCOMPUTERS ARE POWERED BY FORCE10 E-SERIES SWITCH/ROUTERS

MILPITAS, Calif., November 11, 2004 — Force10 Networks today announced that the E-Series powers four of the top 15 fastest supercomputers in the world, including one of the top five, according to a list published Tuesday by Top500.org that measures the performance of supercomputers worldwide. The Force10 E-Series family of switch/routers anchors 7 of the world’s top 50 fastest supercomputers, which combined for a total computing speed of 66.35 trillion calculations per second.

“The high density and resilient performance of the Force10 E-Series makes it an ideal interconnecting switch for supercomputers,” said Stephen Garrison, vice president of corporate marketing for Force10 Networks. “As faster computers are built and greater throughput achieved, the Force10 E-Series is the only solution that can scale to provide high density and non-blocking performance in a single system, enabling simpler yet more powerful configurations.”

Supercomputers, which combine the processing power of multiple computers or servers, are increasingly important to data intensive industries, such as oil and gas services. For these companies, faster data processing is a competitive advantage that better enables them to advise their clients. Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) and Veritas DGC both rely on the Force10 E-Series to increase the performance of their network. PGS ranked 52, 130 and 131 on the list while Veritas DGC came in at 179.

As with most technology, research environments and national laboratories were early adopters of supercomputing technology. Among the leading research institutions that are leveraging the power of supercomputers, the Texas Advanced Computing Center (40), the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (10 and 22) and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (62), have deployed the E-Series to increases computational speeds.

Government organizations are also rapidly adopting grid and cluster computing technology to increase the speed of data analysis. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which ranked 11 and 12, leverages the E-Series to more rapidly predict weather patterns. NASA is also increasing its processing power at the Goddard Space Flight Center (326) with the Force10 E-Series.

The total combined performance of all 500 systems on the list is 1.127 Petaflops per second, compared to 813 Teraflops per second six months ago. The entry point for the top 100 moved from 1.922 Gigaflops per second to 2.026 Teraflops per second, and the number of systems exceeding the 1 Teraflop per second mark increased from 242 to 399. Together, these trends exemplify the rapid increase in processing power of supercomputers and the continued adoption across a broad range of industries.

To meet increasing computing demands, the Force10 TeraScale E-Series supports unparalleled Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet densities and can process one billion packets per second. With built-in redundancy and non-blocking throughput, the TeraScale E-Series provides the reliability and predictability that high performance networks require.

The Top500 project was started in 1993 to provide a reliable basis for tracking and detecting trends in high performance computing. Supercomputers are ranked twice a year based on performance. The latest list is available at www.top500.org.

About Force10 Networks
Force10 Networks is the global technology leader that data center, service provider and enterprise customers rely on when the network is their business. The company’s high performance solutions are designed to deliver new economics by virtualizing and automating Ethernet networks.  Force10’s high density and resilient Ethernet switching and routing products increase network availability, agility and efficiency while reducing power and cooling costs.  Force10 provides 24x7 service and support capabilities to its global customer base in more than 60 countries worldwide.  For more information on Force10 Networks, please visit www.force10networks.com.

Contact:
Kevin Kimball
Force10 Networks Inc.
+1 408 571-3544
kkimball@force10networks.com

Force10 Networks, Force10, E-Series, Traverse, and TraverseEdge are registered trademarks and ExaScale, S-Series, TeraScale, and FTOS are trademarks of Force10 Networks, Inc.  All other company names are trademarks of their respective holders.