ScaleMP announces support for Intel Xeon E5 processors

CUPERTINO, USA: ScaleMP, a leading provider of virtualization solutions for high-end computing, announced the general availability of vSMP Foundation with support for the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 family, code-named “Sandy Bridge”. Several deployments of vSMP Foundation for Intel’s newest processor family have already been in production for several months.

The largest site of vSMP Foundation running on Intel Xeon E5-2600 processor family is the San Diego Supercomputer Center’s (SDSC). SDSC’s Gordon, a unique data-intensive supercomputer, is using 1,024 dual-socket Intel Xeon E5 processor nodes, each with 64 GB DDR3 1333 MHz memory to create 32 virtual-SMPs, each with 512 cores and 2 TB of RAM. The machine uses vSMP Foundation software to aggregate memory from across multiple compute nodes to provide access to a large, logical shared memory space. This architecture speeds up data intensive computing such a genomics, resulting in faster interpretation of results.

"Intel Xeon E5 processor family based servers provide breakthrough in application and I/O performance, and have drawn unprecedented interest from HPC customers," said Joseph Curley, director of marketing for Technical Computing Group at Intel. "The ability to aggregate many of these servers into a single virtual SMP system through ScaleMP’s vSMP Foundation enables very large memory and CPU-count systems while maintaining the manageability advantages of a single OS system image."

vSMP Foundation delivers an effective alternative to proprietary, costly symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) systems, aggregating the power of multiple industry standard x86 servers into one larger virtual SMP. With its flexible and versatile architecture, vSMP Foundation enables the creation of on-demand SMPs as workloads require – enabling customers to improve system utilization and reduce management complexity.

“Our goal is to allow more customers to create large virtual SMPs that will lower the TCO for their organizations. With this in mind, it only made sense that we now support Intel’s highest performing and most cost effective solution,” said Shai Fultheim, founder and CEO of ScaleMP. “By extending our support for the Intel Xeon E5-2600 family of processors, vSMP Foundation continues to establish itself as an industry-leading solution for every workload need.”