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Cornell University

Cornell Theory Center (CTC), the high-performance computing and research center at Cornell University, is ready to roll on a 16-node Windows server cluster using... wait for it... InfiniBand (see Cornell Center Clusters InfiniBand).

The fabric is expected to be the first Windows-based InfiniBand cluster put into production in a real-world environment.

The announcement is important for a couple of reasons. First, the deployment includes technology from two of the largest original supporters of InfiniBand -- Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) -- both of which have been quietly backing off their commitments to support the architecture (see Microsoft Backs Off InfiniBand and Intel Bails on InfiniBand).

And second, it's a key indicator of how this technology is going to be deployed.

CTC's InfiniBand cluster project consists of 16 servers with Intel's Xeon processor configured together on an InfiniSwitch Corp. fabric. The HCA (host channel adapter) card supplier is yet to be determined, but is likely to be IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) or Mellanox Technologies Ltd., according to Dave Lifka, CTC's CTO. Lifka expects to have the cluster up and running on October 1, 2002.

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