IBM and Topspin Communications Forge Key InfiniBand Agreement

Enterprise Networks & Servers, Feb 2004

IBM and Topspin Communications have signed a multi-year agreement to integrate advanced Topspin InfiniBand switch technology on IBM systems, and resell Topspin InfiniBand switches to customers worldwide. The five-year agreement gives IBM access to current and future versions of Topspin's server switches and software for use across the IBM eServer and TotalStorage product line.

InfiniBand is a server interconnect and I/O technology designed to address the needs of computing platforms for increased performance, higher scalability, and improved manageability.

"With this announcement, IBM has placed a major stake in the ground in its commitment to InfiniBand," said Mark Shearer, vice president of marketing and strategy, IBM Systems Group. "As the only industry-standard interconnect today with scalability up to 30Gbps, and remote direct memory access (RDMA), we are convinced that this technology will dramatically improve and simplify the way servers communicate. Working with Topspin, our plan is to make InfiniBand a base technology for all IBM eServer systems and storage, and the underlying fabric for future initiatives around on-demand computing."

Under terms of the agreement, IBM has the right to resell Topspin's current and future generation 4X (lOGbps) and 12X (30Gbps) Server Switch portfolio for the high-performance computing and database clustering markets for use with IBM eServer pSeries, zSeries, iSeries, and xSeries systerns.

Topspin products are currently completing IBM Server Proven certification and have already been IBM TotalStorage Proven and validated for sale with IBM DB2 Universal Database on xSeries servers.

"Our customers are seeing immediate and compelling benefits from our server switch products today," said Krish Ramakrishnan, CEO, Topspin. "By establishing this relationship with IBM, an even wider range of enterprises will be able to profit from our solutions in their scale-out, blade server, and on-demand computing initiatives."