Argonne National Laboratory has deployed Force10 Networks’ E-Series switch/routers to connect to the TeraGrid, the world’s largest supercomputing grid, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF TeraGrid project will initially use a dedicated 40 Gbps wide area “backplane” to connect computers, storage facilities, visualization systems and applications at Argonne and other TeraGrid sites. Clusters connecting to the grid use 10-Gigabit Ethernet interconnections between Gigabit Ethernet-attached Linux servers. Other members of the grid using Force10 equipment include the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the San Diego Supercomputing Center (SDSC), and the Center for Advanced Computing Research (CACR) at the California Institute of Technology.
http://www.force10networks.com
http://www.teragrid.org
- Force10 Networks’ 10 Gbps Ethernet switch/router supports up to 336 ports of Gigabit Ethernet or 28 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GigE) per chassis. Six custom ASICs deliver non-blocking, line-rate forwarding across all ports, even with access control lists (ACLs) or QoS applied. Force10’s software delivers full functionality L2 switching and L3 routing. The company initially is offering two models: the full-size E1200 featuring 14 line-card slots, 1.2 Tbps non-blocking switch fabric, 40 Gbps bandwidth per line-card slot, redundant route processor modules (RPMs), redundant switch fabric modules (SFMs), redundant power and hot-swap of all key components; and the half-sized E600, which uses the same cards.
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Force10 Networks has raised $209 million in funding, including $41 million in February 2003.