PKI Center Uses Force10

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Force10 Networks, the pioneer in building and securing reliable networks, today announced that the Peter Kiewit Institute’s (PKI) Holland Computing Center at the University of Nebraska has deployed the TeraScale E-Series® family of switch/routers and S50 access switches in its newest supercomputer, which ranks 43 on the Top500.org list of the world’s fastest supercomputers. The Force10 TeraScale E-Series is supporting 52 Ten Gigabit and 900 Gigabit Ethernet ports to form the reliable foundation researchers at the Center require to optimize the performance of the supercomputer.

“PKI is dedicated to bringing students and industry leaders together in a research environment to foster innovation, and this supercomputer allows us to do that at a whole new level,” said John Callahan, director of technical infrastructure for PKI and co-founder of the Holland Computing Center. “As an innovator itself, Force10 understands this commitment and delivers a networking solution that helps us provide high performance computing resources that are crucial to state-of-the-art research.”

The Holland Computing Center’s supercomputer leverages the high Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet densities of the Force10 TeraScale E-Series and S50 to build a high performance core that interconnects more than 1,100 nodes. With support for 90 Gigabit Ethernet ports on a single line card or 1,260 per system, the TeraScale E-Series enables the Center to interconnect its supercomputer with a single switch while also supporting the 52 Ten Gigabit Ethernet ports required to build the high performance core. The S50 provides additional bandwidth capacity to ensure researchers can retrieve data and results without creating a bottleneck.

The scalability of the Force10 TeraScale E-Series will enable the Center to seamlessly support additional computing capacity as it doubles its existing size to reach an estimated 60 Teraflops or 60 trillion calculations per second in the near future. Additionally, the built-in reliability of the TeraScale E-Series provides the always-on access the Holland Computing Center requires regardless of traffic conditions.

“Force10 has a long history of partnering with PKI to facilitate groundbreaking research while providing the next generation of computer scientists the cutting edge tools they need to explore new computing possibilities,” said Stephen Garrison, vice president of marketing at Force10 Networks. “The Force10 TeraScale E-Series delivers the reliable performance and scalable density that PKI’s Holland Computing Center requires to allow a divergent range of university and community users to benefit from one of the world’s fastest supercomputers.”Force10 Networks Inc.