The end-to-end portfolio is designed for HPC clusters in which the performance of the cluster interconnects can define overall application performance. High-bandwidth, low-latency DDR switches and HCAs from QLogic are combined with powerful, easy-to-use management tools to form HPC networking solutions that are faster and easier to deploy. QLogic will also be showcasing gateways which provide connectivity between Infiniband and 4Gb Fibre Channel SANs as well as 10Gb Ethernet Networks. A single card installed in an InfiniBand switch from QLogic provides hundreds of servers in HPC clusters with access to storage in Fibre Channel SANs or Ethernet Networks."There has been major growth in the number of HPC users around the world, but system administrators are deploying solutions that are splintered across many different product offerings", stated Earl Joseph, programme vice president, High-Performance Systems, IDC. "We expect many sites will move toward simplifying their environments by standardizing on fewer solutions. We also expect many sites to explore combining their storage and compute interconnects into a common solution that handles both."

According to a recent IDC presentation entitled "HPC Storage Trends", the market for HPC servers has grown faster than all other server markets over the last five years. In 2006, sales of HPC servers surpassed $10 billion and continued a trend of double digit year-over-year growth. IDC projects the HPC server market will exceed $14 billion in revenue by 2010. IDC estimates that sales of storage systems in the HPC market totaled $3.9 billion in 2006 and will grow to $5.7 billion in 2010. Increasing demand for storage is being driven primarily by skyrocketing performance gains from HPC servers with rapidly growing processor counts that generate far higher data volumes and traffic than just a few years ago. It is not uncommon for larger HPC sites to produce terabytes of data per week, in some cases per day, and to require storage capacity in the multiple-petabyte range.