Press Releases
2010
Force10 Networks Powers Two of the World’s Five Fastest Supercomputers
Los Alamos National Laboratory and Germany’s Forschungszentrum Juelich, ranked #3 and #5 respectively on the 2010 Top500.org world’s fastest supercomputer list, are powered in part with Force10 Ethernet switch/routers
SAN JOSE, Calif., August 17, 2010 – Force10 Networks, Inc., a global technology leader that data center, service provider and enterprise customers rely on when the network is their business, today announced that its Ethernet switch/router solutions contribute significantly to the network performance of two of the world’s top five most powerful supercomputers, according to the most recent Top500.org list. The third-ranked supercomputer worldwide, Roadrunner, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Germany’s Forschungszentrum Juelich, ranked fifth, both deploy the Force10 E-Series® switch/router to provide dynamic connectivity to the supercomputer’s high-speed Ethernet networks.
“No matter their global location, supercomputer environments around the world require a non-blocking fabric that contributes to an economical networking solution that delivers low, predictable latency with deep buffering and congestion management capability,” says John Erdman, vice president, global alliances at Force10 Networks. “The architectural approach taken with the Force10 Ethernet switch/routers mirrors the needs of a supercomputing environment, which requires non-blocking, line-rate performance to ensure that bottlenecks are eliminated and research is uninterrupted.”
In addition to powering the world’s third fastest supercomputer, Force10 switch/router solutions provide 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) interconnect functionality to Europe’s fastest supercomputer, Jugene, at Germany’s Forschungszentrum Juelich facility where the Force10 E-Series E1200 with more than 200 10 GbE ports is deployed. Force10 continues to maintain a global supercomputing presence with deployments in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, helping to power three of the top 12, five of the top 40 and 13 of the top 100 fastest supercomputers worldwide.
Supercomputing environments, such as those at national laboratories, continue to need greater computational power while maintaining manageable complexity even as these supercomputers and their supporting networks continue to get larger and operate faster. Force10 Ethernet switch/routers, from the ExaScale E-Series switch/router and the C-Series resilient switch in the core to the S-Series access switches on the edge, provide the non-blocking performance, reliability and scalability that are required to optimize supercomputer performance and enhance state-of-the-art of research and analysis.
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 current list is available at www.top500.org.
About Force10 Networks
Force10 Networks develops high-performance data center solutions powered by the industry’s most innovative line of open, standards-based, networking hardware and software. The company’s Open Cloud Networking framework grants Web 2.0/portal operators, cloud and hosting providers, enterprise and special-purpose data center customers new levels of flexibility, performance, scale and automation—fundamentally changing the economics of data center networking. Force10 Networks operates globally, providing 24x7 service and support to its customer base in more than 60 countries worldwide. For more information, visit www.force10networks.com.
Contact:
Michael Schoolnik
StoryPR on behalf of Force10 Networks Inc.
+1 415-674-3816
michael@storypr.com
Force10 Networks, the Force10 Networks logo, Force10, E-Series, Traverse, and TraverseEdge are registered trademarks and Open Cloud Networking, Z-Series, ZettaScale, ExaScale, S-Series, TeraScale, FTOS, Open Automation, are trademarks of Force10 Networks, Inc. All other company names are trademarks of their respective holders.
