Sandia National Laboratories has linked more than 4,000 Dell PowerEdge servers to create a high-capacity cluster with an approximate aggregate memory of 24 Terabytes and the ability to process 60 trillion operations per second (Teraflop). The Sandia Thunderbird cluster was recently ranked the fifth fastest supercomputer in the world, according to Top500.org.
Sandia is using Force10 Networks’ TeraScale E-Series family of switch/routers fitted with 90-port Gigabit Ethernet cards and 10 GigE backbone links. In addition to interconnecting the servers in the cluster, the Force10 TeraScale E-Series also provides the command and control infrastructure for the Thunderbird cluster, which is Sandia’s second institutionally maintained cluster.
http://www.force10networks.com
