HPQ: HP Enhances Cluster Portfolio for High-performance Computing

HP today announced enhancements to its Unified Cluster Portfolio for high-performance computing (HPC) at Supercomputing 2006.

Product updates include support for new HP servers and workstations powered by Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® 5300 series processors. The HP Cluster Platform 3000 system now runs new Quad-Core processor-based HP ProLiant servers that offer customers greater energy efficiency and can improve system performance by nearly 50 percent.(1)

Additionally, the HP Scalable Visualization Array (SVA) V2.0 is available on the new HP xw8400 Workstations running the Quad-Core processors.

Further product updates include new server graphics and parallel compositing features for the HP SVA and enhancements to HP XC System Software and the HP StorageWorks Scalable File Share.

These HPC systems and software are part of the HP Unified Cluster Portfolio, a comprehensive, modular package of hardware, software and services that helps customers better manage, store, access and visualize the large volumes of data created by highly complex science, engineering and analysis applications.


HP Scalable Visualization Array V2.0

Enhancements to the HP SVA include support for HP ProLiant DL140 G3 graphics servers as visualization nodes and the addition of the groundbreaking HP Parallel Compositing library and open parallel compositing application programming interface (API), co-developed with Computational Engineering International. These additions to SVA simplify the development and use of parallel applications on graphics clusters and give customers maximum efficiency and utilization of their cluster resources.

“The HP Parallel Compositing Library and API will do for graphics clusters what the Message Passing Interface did for compute clusters – allow us to take advantage of the inherent performance scalability of clusters with network-based pixel compositing,” said Jean M. Favre, chief scientist and leader of the scientific visualization group at CSCS, the Swiss national supercomputing centre. “Our new 16-node HP SVA cluster will be available remotely to the wide-area network of Swiss researchers and provide them with the advanced, cost-effective visualization capabilities they need to complement the supercomputing resources available at CSCS.”

New releases of HP XC System Software and HP StorageWorks Scalable File Share

Available now, HP XC System Software Version 3.1 enhances cluster and job management and supports the latest processor and interconnect technologies featured in HP Cluster Platforms, including the HP BladeSystem c-Class portfolio. Based on proven and robust open source components that have been enhanced by commercial technologies, XC System Software provides customers a complete and supported solution for the operation of a Linux-based cluster specifically designed for demanding HPC workloads.

HP StorageWorks Scalable File Share Version 2.2 now provides double-speed interconnects and boosts performance for Linux, Windows and UNIX file system access while improving security and control. It includes support for double-data-rate InfiniBand-4X and bonded dual-GbE, which doubles the storage bandwidth for Ethernet-connected clusters. This Lustre 1.4.6-based release also adds support for quotas, access control lists, EVA 4000 storage, and multiple-independent IB-connected clusters.

Vital-IT, a Swiss life science initiative that provides computational resources to the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and other research institutions, recently acquired an integrated compute and storage cluster that includes a 64-node HP Cluster Platform 3000BL system based on HP BladeSystem c-Class servers and a 13-terabyte HP SFS storage system. This new cluster will join Vital-IT’s four existing compute clusters, making it one of the most powerful life science computing facilities in Europe.

“At Vital-IT the genomics and proteomics research we support generates exploding volumes of data. We need the fast, scalable HP SFS storage system to give our compute clusters rapid and transparent access to that data,” said Victor Jongeneel, director, Vital-IT. “We also need the HP BladeSystem c-Class systems for their interconnect performance and power and cooling efficiencies as we move towards an increasingly dense data center to meet our users’ demands.”

More information about the enhancements to the Unified Cluster Portfolio is available at www.hp.com/go/clusterportfolio5pr.com