Ethernet Alliance Demonstrates High Performance Computing (HPC) Solutions at SC14

By Michael Githens


SC14 will take place in New Orleans from November 17 – 20, 2014. In preparation, the Ethernet Alliance held a hot-stage event last week to prepare a live demonstration to be shown in booth #3539.

Representatives from Amphenol, Avago, Cisco, Dell, Ixia, Mellanox, TE Connectivity, and Volex came together at Ixia’s iSimCity lab in Santa Clara to create this demonstration, which represented the typical mixed networking environment seen in real world data centers.

The usual thought when discussing high-performance computers (HPC), or supercomputing, is around the processing power and speed of the computer involved. However, there is another side that has to be addressed as well: the need to send large amounts of data to and from these supercomputers. The Ethernet Alliance’ demonstration at SC14 will show an example network that includes a supercomputer, along with examples of a variety of different types of data transfer sessions simultaneously performing request and response protocols before sending the large data transfer required of an endpoint HPC system.

The demonstration will use:

  • 10Gbps, 40Gbps, and 100Gbps data speeds, with devices that represent a core router, a core switch, and end-of-row and top-of-rack switches. These devices are being provided by Cisco, Dell, and Mellanox.
  • Emulated traffic that will flow through the system by using Ixia’s IxNetwork and AppLibrary applications, along with its Xcellon-FlexAP 10GbE and Xcellon Multis 40/100GbE hardware.
  • Connectors and cables for the system as provided by Amphenol, Avago, TE Connectivity, and Volex. This includes the traditional transceiver/cable model, as well as some of the latest active opticals cables (AOCs) and direct attached cables (DACs). Additionally, there will be connections that start at 40GbE on one end and break out to four 10GbE connections at the other end.

We hope you will come by the booth to see this demonstration and learn more about that and the Ethernet Alliance and our member companies in booth #3539.

Additional Resources:

SC14