SCA's Linda Delivering a 15-fold Performance Improvement in Parallel Processing on the Giganet cLAN Network

New Haven 01 Feb 00 Giganet, and SCIENTIFIC Computing Associates announced support for SCIENTIFIC's Linda application development software over Giganet's cLAN high performance server farm network products. Based on the industry standard Virtual Interface (VI) Architecture, the combined solution offers scientific and financial services users a 15-fold application performance boost over previous Ethernet-based implementations. Message passing latency (delays) also improved by more than 10-fold.

The combination of high throughput and low latency allows computations and communications to be run simultaneously. This powerful Giganet and SCIENTIFIC solution enhances the capabilities of customers running Linda-based parallel processing applications within their Linux Beowulf or Windows environments. Application areas such as financial modeling, petroleum, biotechnology, and other compute-intensive environments will benefit with accelerated performance.

"Our benchmarks have been very encouraging," stated Andrew Sherman, Vice President of SCIENTIFIC Computing Associates. "We believe Linda, built on the VI Architecture and using cLAN server farm networks, can provide a uniquely powerful parallel computing environment. Of particular interest are the improvements in latency and bandwidth that make this an ideal solution for a vast array of applications."

Giganet's cLAN products support the VI Architecture standard for both Linux and Windows environments. cLAN's award winning host adapters and cluster switches are the industry's highest performing server-to-server interconnects, offering minimal messaging delays and low CPU resource utilization, as well as ease of installation and use.

SCIENTIFIC's Linda is a software development tool that enables multiple processors and systems to be linked together and act as a single, cohesive system. Linda combines processing speed and a high level of fault tolerance to deliver supercomputing capabilities, even over a network of multi-processor PC servers. Linda facilitates the development of parallel and distributed computing applications in a variety of industries - from aerospace and automotive, to petroleum, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and finance.

"The tests at SCIENTIFIC really caught our attention," said Martin Schultz, Arthur K. Watson Professor of Computer Science, Yale University. "I'm looking forward to extensive tests on multiple hardware configurations. I expect the results will show outstanding improvements over Fast Ethernet and have a dramatic effect on the scalability of our parallel applications." "Support for Giganet cLAN allows Linda applications to scale to new heights in high-performance parallel computing," said Gareth Taube, Giganet Vice President, Marketing. "The combination of Linda and cLAN will further accelerate the deployment of low cost server farms to solve large business critical problems." Founded in 1980, SCIENTIFIC Computing Associates has pioneered the commercial use of parallel and distributed computing. With its introduction of Linda, the company was the first to offer to business a cost-effective, packaged product to harness the potential of supercomputing. The company's expertise and ongoing research into these fields has resulted in various government contracts and development and marketing partnerships with a number companies include Giganet, IBM, Compaq, and Red Hat, Inc.

Ad Emmen

[News on Advanced IT] [Calendar] [Analysis] [IT in Medicine]