Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SANTA CLARA, Calif. & YOKNEAM, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 22, 2002

Second Generation InfiniBand Server Blades Deliver the Ultimate

Compute Engine for Database and Enterprise Computing Applications

Mellanox Technologies, Ltd., the leading provider of InfiniBand(SM) silicon, announced the availability of its Nitro II 4X (10 Gb/sec) InfiniBand server blade reference platform. The Nitro II platform utilizes Mellanox's second-generation 10 Gb/sec InfiniHost(TM) host channel adaptor (HCA) and InfiniScale(TM) switching silicon. The Nitro II platform consists of 2.2 GHz Intel(R) Pentium 4 processor based diskless server blades, dual 16-port 4X switches, and a 10 Gb/sec backplane supporting 480 Gb/sec of switching capacity in a compact 14 blade chassis. The combination of high performance processors, superb memory capacity and second-generation InfiniBand silicon offers OEMs and developers an ideal 10 Gb/sec development platform for optimizing the performance of clustered databases and other data center applications.

"InfiniBand diskless server blades create a whole new class of data center solutions that provide two key server improvements. First, Nitro II blades provides more than 3 times the existing CPU performance available through the use of a 2.2 GHz Intel processor versus the 700 or 800 MHz speeds offered in current blade technologies," said Yuval Leader vice president of system solutions, Mellanox Technologies. "Secondly, the InfiniBand architecture enables CPU, I/O, and storage sharing across all data center systems; rather than the duplication and isolation of these essential resources in each and every server or server blade. This allows data center managers the ability to scale, provision or redeploy CPU, I/O or storage resources individually, on an as-needed basis."

Nitro II, like Mellanox's first-generation InfiniBand server blade reference design released in January 2002, provides unprecedented levels of integration, ease of use, performance, I/O sharing and management capabilities delivering lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) benefits for enterprise and Internet data centers. New features for Nitro II include Mellanox's advanced InfiniHost HCA, an Intel Pentium 4 processor, expanded memory capabilities and a 10 Gb/sec switching backplane. This platform provides a huge leap in performance capabilities that is ideal for improving application and failover performance for clustered databases by leveraging InfiniBand's high bandwidth, low latency RDMA capabilities.