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> Fujitsu Builds First InfiniBand Linux Cluster 
> 
> Section: 02. Today's News 
> 
> Fujitsu Ltd's research laboratories have built the first
> Linux-based supercomputer cluster using the open standard
> InfiniBand interconnect. The cluster, which was built from
> 16 two-way Primergy Intel-based servers, was created using
> InfiniBand fabric that provided a maximum data transfer rate
> of 2.5Gbps. Both Fujitsu and Intel Corp are members of the
> InfiniBand Trade Association, and IBM is the other big
> cheerleader for InfiniBand technology.
> 
> Unlike many Intel-based Linux clusters, which rely on the
> open source Beowulf clustering software, the Fujitsu
> InfiniBand cluster uses a clustering program called SCore,
> the development of which was commissioned by the Japanese
> Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and performed by
> Real World Computing Partnership (RWCP), a consortium based
> in Tsukuba, Japan. The SCore clustering program does not,
> like Beowulf, use the TCP/IP protocol stack for interserver
> communication, but rather relies on a much leaner and meaner
> SCore protocol that can communication over Ethernet, Fast
> Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet or Myrinet supercomputing links.
> 
> Using the Myrinet interconnect, an SCore cluster with 64
> dual-processor NEC Express 5800 servers with 800MHz
> Pentium-III processors and 512Mb of main memory were able to
> deliver 146.9Mbps of bandwidth. Gigabit Ethernet links
> delivered half of that bandwidth on the same cluster, and
> triple Fast Ethernet links delivered half again that
> bandwidth under the best of circumstances.
> 
> That the InfiniBand interconnect fabric could deliver a
> sustained bandwidth of 2.5Gbps on a similar SCore cluster
> shows the reason why IBM, Fujitsu, Intel, Sun Microsystems
> Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co, Compaq Computer Corp and other
> heavy promoters of InfiniBand are looking for this
> technology to transform supercomputer clusters, and any
> server-to-peripheral as well as server-to-server
> connections.
> 
> The Fujitsu SCore cluster was built using pre-release
> versions of InfiniBand hardware and software from Intel.
> Fujitsu demonstrated the SCore Infiniband cluster running a
> molecular dynamics calculation application called Amber that
> was developed at the University of California in San
> Francisco. The Amber application was built using Intel's
> 32-bit Fortran compilers for the Pentium III processors.
> 
> The RWCP lab has been prototyping supercomputer clusters
> based on Unix workstations and Unix and Linux servers since
> 1995. The lab has demonstrated SCore clustering on Sun
> Sparc, Compaq Alpha, and Intel Pentium platforms. The
> biggest SCore cluster it has built to date is a 512
> processor cluster comprised of 256 dual- processor NEC
> Express 5800 servers with 933MHz Pentium III processors and
> 512Mb of memory. This cluster, called the SCore cluster III,
> ran the TurboLinux 6.1 version of Linux and the SCore 4.1
> version of the SCore clustering software. This cluster
> delivered a peak performance of 955 gigaflops using a mix of
> Myrinet and Fast Ethernet interconnect.