Super-Powered SC Conference Network Goes Live

Ultra High Capacity SCinet Network to Accommodate Multiple Terabytes of Data for
Annual Conference on High Performance Computing, Networking and Storage
PORTLAND, Ore.--(Business Wire)--
For seven days, the Oregon Convention Center will be home to the most powerful
network in the world - SCinet. Built each year for the annual SC conference,
SCinet brings to life a highly sophisticated and extreme local and wide area
network fabric that can support the revolutionary applications and network
experiments that have become a trademark of the conference.

SC09 held from November 14-20, 2009, focuses on the latest advances in high
performance computing, networking, storage and analysis. With a massive 400
Gigabits per second in bandwidth capacity - more than most networks in the world
- SCinet supports exhibitors from industry and academia to demonstrate their
most aggressive supercomputing and networking applications that are either in
production or in an experimental or pre-commercial state.

SCinet is designed and built by over 140 volunteers from universities,
government and industry and leverages $20 million in donated equipment from
leaders in the technology sector who seek the opportunity to showcase their
products in this highly advanced network environment. This year, the team has
deployed over 200 miles of fiber optic cable in the Oregon Convention Center and
is utilizing over 34 miles of fiber in the regional Portland area to make these
network capabilities possible.

SCinet links the conference center to research and commercial networks around
the world like the Department of Energy`s ESnet, the Internet2 Network and
National LambdaRail. SCinet will support the exa-floods of data from SC09
exhibitors and attendees and will then measure and monitor every aspect of the
network's performance to provide the public a unique real-time window into the
core of this powerful network`s inner-workings and operations. Live network
traffic will be available online via: http://measurement.sc09.org/public

"The SCinet team has worked diligently over the past twelve months to design and
build what we consider to be the most robust network capable of supporting the
leading-edge applications of the conference`s exhibitors and attendees, who are
known for pushing network and computing resources to the extreme each year,"
said Ralph McEldowney, Chief, Advanced Technologies Section, Air Force Research
Laboratory Supercomputing Resource Center and SC09 SCinet committee chair.

Highlights of the SCinet infrastructure include:

Showfloor Infrastructure

Made possible through routing and switching equipment from contributors
including Juniper Networks, Cisco and Brocade, SCinet`s showfloor infrastructure
supports more than 150 industry and research exhibitors with network
connectivity ranging from one Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) to 10 GbE. This creates a
high performance infrastructure where exhibitors will showcase their latest
systems, services, research and scientific achievements.

In addition, the SCinet team will also enable Wi-Fi wireless connectivity
throughout the convention center for exhibitors and attendees using equipment
provided by the Oregon Convention Center and Xirrus. High-speed access to the
commercial Internet will be provided for all SC09 participants through SCinet`s
collaboration with the Network for Education and Research in Oregon (NERO) and
360networks Inc.

Wide Area Connectivity

The SCinet wide area network (WAN) team is led by engineers from NERO, which is
providing the critical regional networking to connect the convention center to
the Internet and research networks around the world. This year, several
collaborators will leverage the wide area network to showcase new advances in 40
and 100 Gigabit per second (Gbps) network transport technology, which would at
least quadruple the average capacity of most networks today.

Vendors contributing equipment for wide area network connectivity include:
Nortel, Ciena, Infinera, Fujitsu, and Cisco. Fiber optic cable between the
Oregon Convention Center and downtown Portland is provided by Qwest and Level 3
Communications. Internet exchange facilities used by SCinet in Portland are
provided by Level 3.

OpenFabrics

For the past four years, SCinet`s OpenFabrics team has built an InfiniBand
network infrastructure at SC providing connectivity to numerous organizations
and vendors in support of OpenFabrics-enabled demonstrations. InfiniBand is a
standards-based interconnect technology that delivers low latency, high
bandwidth capabilities typical of high performance computing environments like
those demonstrated at SC. These capabilities will enable a variety of
application and storage services allowing exhibitors to use the InfiniBand
network for cloud computing, server-to-server processing, and visualization. For
SC09, the InfiniBand network will be built using 12X InfiniBand Quad Data Rate
(QDR) 120-gigabit per second (Gbps) circuits throughout the entire network. The
InfiniBand network is built on technology and services provided by: Avago
Technologies, Bay Microsystems, Finisar, Intel, Luxtera, Mellanox, NERSC, and
Qlogic.

Extreme Networks (Xnet)

Since 1999, SCinet has provided a capability called Xnet for research and
industry leaders to demonstrate emerging, pre-commercial, cutting-edge
breakthroughs in high performance networking technologies. This year Xnet will
highlight three experimental technology demonstrations including:

* 12X InfiniBand QDR (96Gbps): SCinet`s OpenFabrics initiative has teamed up
with the HPC Advisory Council to make use of 12X InfiniBand QDR infrastructure
and will demonstrate several different applications between all InfiniBand
network participants including a Remote Desktop over InfiniBand (RDI) for live
desktop sharing between 21 unique users.
* Multi-Layer Application-Aware Network Provisioning, and Grooming Using
OpenFlow: Ciena, Stanford University, and Internet2 will demonstrate a unified
control plane for packet and circuit networks based on the OpenFlow architecture
which separates data and control plane; provides a common flow based data path
abstraction for layers L0-L4; and a control plane API to the network.
* The High Performance Digital Media Network (HPDMnet) is an experimental
network research initiative that is designing and implementing the first
international high performance service created for high quality, large-scale
digital media, including support for extremely high volume flows.

The Bandwidth Challenge

At every SC conference since 2000, teams of scientists and engineers have
competed in the Bandwidth Challenge to see who could make the most productive
use of the huge bandwidth provided by SCinet. And while no group has achieved
the unstated goal of flooding the network to the breaking point, each year has
seen creative applications, which move record amounts of data across the
network. In today`s petaflop-era of high performance computing, this year's
challenge asks participants to demonstrate how large a data set they can
transmit in a fixed period of time and demonstrate new techniques for moving
data sets for scientific projects. Five teams representing multiple institutions
from around the world will compete in the Challenge and the winner will be
announced on Thursday, November 19, 2009.

Sustainability

As the entire SC09 conference focuses on the theme of sustainability - SCinet
will also play a role. For SC09, SCinet engineers will focus on collecting
quantitative sustainability measurements to provide a benchmark for future
conferences, as well as research data for other energy efficiency and
sustainability research projects. SCinet engineers will collect detailed power
consumption data for the main SCinet Network Operations Center and display those
measurements through the SCinet measurement infrastructure
(http://measurement.sc09.org/public). SCinet will also provide power measurement
and network infrastructure to other sustainability efforts in the conference
that wish to directly measure and quantify their carbon impact from electrical
power usage.

Collaborators

SCinet is the result of the hard work and significant contributions of many
government, research, education and corporate collaborators. Collaborators in
SCinet for 2009 include:

Air Force Research Laboratory DoD Supercomputing Resource Center, AMD, Ames
Laboratory, Apparent Networks, Argonne National Laboratory, Arista, Army
Research Laboratory DoD Supercomputing Resource Center, Army Space and Missile
Defense Command, Avago Technologies, AVETeC, Bay Microsystems, Bivio, Brocade,
CA Labs, Ciena, Cinch, Cisco, Clemson University, Computer Sciences Corporation,
Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, Darkstrand,
Electronic Visualization Laboratory, EMCORE, Energy Sciences Network, Finisar,
Florida LambdaRail, Force10, Fujitsu, Gigamon, HPC Advisory Council, Indiana
University, Infinera, InfiniBand Trade Association, InMon, Intel, Internet2,
Juniper Networks, Lamprey Networks, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Level 3 Communications, Lockheed Martin,
Lonestar Education and Research Network, Los Alamos National Laboratory,
Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, Luxtera, Mellanox, National Center for
Supercomputing Applications, National Energy Research Scientific Computing
Center, National LambdaRail, Nemean, Network for Education and Research in
Oregon, Nortel, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Obsidian, Ohio Academic Resources
Network, Ohio Supercomputer Center, OpenFabrics Alliance, Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory, Pacific Wave, Purdue University, QLogic, Qwest, RAID Inc.,
San Diego Supercomputer Center, Sandia National Laboratories, SARA Computing and
Networking Services, Solera Networks, South Carolina Computing, Starlight, Sun
Microsystems, Texas A&M University, Translight, Tyco Electronics, University of
California-San Francisco, University of Amsterdam, University of Delaware,
University of Florida, University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory,
University of Texas, University of Utah, University of Wisconsin, Voltaire,
Zarlink and Ziti.

About SC09:

SC09, sponsored by ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and the IEEE
Computer Society, offers a complete technical education program and exhibition
to showcase the many ways high performance computing, networking, storage and
analysis lead to advances in scientific discovery, research, education and
commerce. This premier international conference includes a globally attended
technical program, workshops, tutorials, an exhibit area, demonstrations and
hands-on learning. The SC conference series is among Tradeshow Week magazine's
Top 200 events. For more information on SC09, please visit
http://sc09.supercomputing.org/.

SC09 Communications Chair
Mike Bernhardt, 503-804-1714
mike@teamlibra.com

Copyright Business Wire 2009