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Scalable Servers Corporation Announces the flexBLADE Technical Workgroup Computing Platform
Scalable Servers Corporation exited stealth mode today and announced the release of its versatile flexBLADE technical workgroup computing platform based on AMD Opteron processors.

Scalable Servers Corporation (SSC) is a privately held, world class computer design and manufacturing company based in Fremont, California. SSCs flexBLADE platform is a multi-purpose built, stand alone solution targeting the computational needs of technical workgroups, research and development teams and SMB customers throughout the High Performance Computing market.

Founded by industry veterans from IBM, Intel, Compaq and Sun Microsystems, SSCs flexBLADE delivers a dedicated computational platform with multiple configuration options in a self contained form factor. The flexBLADE can be utilized as an individual desk-side cluster or departmental resource or easily rack mounted and scaled out as an HPC solution. The flexBLADE meets the computational, networking and storage requirements of many individuals and workgroups in one platform that is compact, quiet, cool and energy efficient, said Leo Yuan, President & General Manager of Scalable Servers Corporation.

Capable of a wide range of configurations, the versatile flexBLADE is comprised of a single chassis form factor with up to 5 dual socket blades, configurable as a cluster, SMP, hybrid-combination or small server farm. Supporting the full range Next Generation AMD Opteron processors, the platform can scale from a cool and quiet, low power 1500 watt departmental solution, up to a robustly configured 3000 watt compute powerhouse. The flexBLADE also supports scaling out beyond standard dual socket to quad socket SMP, FAT NODE, configurations with ample memory support (16 DIMM slots per node, or 80 total DIMM Slots per chassis), storage (up to 10-2.5 and 14-3.5 disks), and a PCIe x16 slot per blade which allows multiple graphics heads per platform. Built-in networking includes 10 or 20 Gigabit InfiniBand, 10 Gigabit and 1 Gigabit Ethernet with full system management that allows the flexBLADE platform a wide range of configurations to match performance and cost requirements.

The flexBLADE platform from Scalable Servers Corporation is a fine example of what can be accomplished with the versatility of the AMD Opteron processor, said David Rich, director of High Performance Computing at AMD. AMD64 technology with Direct Connect Architecture helps deliver socket and system scalability along with the investment protection of simple upgrade paths to next-generation processors. This helps our customers deliver exceptionally flexible platforms that can be the basis for a long-term, unified High Performance Computing strategy.

The HPC market continues to expand as new customers are enabled with technologies like desk-side and workgroup clusters, said Shawn Hansen, Director of HPC marketing, Windows Server Division at Microsoft Corp. The introduction of flexBLADE and Windows Compute Cluster Server creates a turnkey solution in a convenient form factor that enables scientists and researchers to focus on driving productivity.

The innovative flexBLADE platform utilizes Mellanox interconnect solutions to provide a leading edge clustered, multi-core environment for personal and workgroup use, said Gilad Shainer, senior technical marketing manager at Mellanox Technologies. InfiniBand connectivity is a key ingredient for parallel application performance, overall system productivity and provides a unified fabric for external, high-speed, storage solutions.

The new SSC flexBLADE is an exciting product for Quatrio, because it demonstrated some very important capabilities on industry standard x86-64 hardware only seen on big iron until now, said Zeki Yasar, CTO of Quatrio. By combining the flexBlade hardware with server virtualization software we now have a platform that allows you to create hard and soft partitions in a single box, serving up all of your mission critical applications on a combination of the most widely used operating systems in a highly available configuration. One of the most important aspects of the flexBLADE is the ability to roll it out in almost any environment with out having to make special considerations around power, cooling and space. The amount of processing power and memory that can be packed into this box is going to help run the most demanding simulations in record times, ultimately saving organizations of all sizes time and money and accelerating their time to market.

We are very excited to be working with SSC and the new flexBLADE platform toward developing a variety of Personal Super Computer (PSC) solutions to address the market, said Brian Corn, Director of Marketing & Product Development at Thinkmate. We have seen a tremendous amount of interest in the PSC segment where customers are looking for the convenience of a versatile desk-side supercomputing solution previously unavailable in the market.

Founded as a spin off of Mitac International group, SSC has offices in Fremont, California and Taipei, Taiwan. SSCs core flexBLADE platform will be available through strategic OEM and System Integrator partners in the coming months. The flexBLADE platform will be demonstrated on the OpenFabrics SCinet at the booths of AMD (#757), Mellanox (#127) and Microsoft (#1407) at SC07 in Reno, Nevada, November 12th-16th.

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Opteron and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Microsoft Corporation develops, manufactures, licenses and supports a range of software products for computing devices. The Company software products include operating systems for servers, personal computers (PCs) and intelligent devices, server applications for distributed computing environments, information worker productivity applications, business solution applications, high-performance computing applications and software development tools. It provides consulting and product support services, and trains and certifies computer system integrators and developers. The Company sells the Xbox 360 video game console, the Zune digital music and entertainment device, PC games and peripherals. Online offerings are delivered through its Windows Live, Office Live, and MSN portals and channels. It has five segments: Client, Server and Tools, the Online Services Business, the Microsoft Business Division, and the Entertainment and Devices Division. In August 2007, it acquired aQuantive Inc.

Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. is a supplier of semiconductor-based interconnect products that facilitate data transmission between servers, communications infrastructure equipment and storage systems. The Companys products is a part of a total solution focused on computing, storage and communication applications used in enterprise data centers, computing and embedded systems. It provides industry standard architecture that provides specifications for interconnects. In addition to supporting InfiniBand, its products also supports the industry standard Ethernet interconnect specification. The Company provides interconnect products based on semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs). It designs, develops and markets adapter and switch ICs. These ICs are added to servers, storage, communications infrastructure equipment and embedded systems by either integrating them directly on circuit boards or inserting adapter cards into slots on the circuit board

Quatrio was founded with one goal: to deliver top value in compute and storage hardware. Veterans of AT&T, Xerox, Sun, and EMC, Quatrio's founders know quality. We also know that successful systems must be affordable and above all be backed up with unfailing vendor support. With these three key objectives, Quatrio set out to simplify the complexities of todays IT world.

Thinkmate has been a world-class provider of custom computer and server equipment since 1986. Our business was formed around assisting our customers in planning, budgeting, and implementing complete solutions. We provide a broad range of customized server, storage, and cluster solutions to Governments, Universities, Corporations, and the High Performance Computing markets. Our commitment to superior customer service and cutting edge technology has kept us the number one white box server solutions provider for nearly twenty years.

Published Thursday, November 08, 2007 5:41 AM by David Marshall
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Windows Server 2008 for Developers (HPC, Parallel Computing, Virtualization, and Tools) - (Author's Link) - December 15, 2007 10:43 AM

White Papers HPC++ Tab Windows HPC Server 2008 Technical Overview Learn more about Windows HPC Server

MSDN Blog Postings » White Papers and News - December 15, 2007 - (Author's Link) - December 15, 2007 1:17 PM
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