Dolphin announces Industry’s First PCI Express Cluster and Multi-host I/O Solution
San Francisco, California – August 19th 2008 –At the Intel Developers Forum, Dolphin Interconnect Solutions, a global provider of high performance, high availability interconnect solutions, introduced a new Multi-host PCI Express I/O expansion product to its Dolphin Express line of clustering and I/O expansion solutions. The Dolphin Express solution provides the most flexibility of any PCI Express I/O expansion product; allowing clients to utilize a single interconnect for both clustering and PCI Express I/O expansion. Clients can now reduce their initial investment requirements in servers and PCs by implementing the Dolphin solution to provide current and future I/O scalability. In addition, the combined clustering and I/O solution simplifies deployment of database clusters, departmental clusters and distributed I/O applications.
The new Multi-host I/O solution allows sharing of a DXE410 I/O expansion chassis across multiple nodes by creating separate I/O domains. Clients can now utilize low cost PCs and servers with limited I/O capability and take advantage of the I/O domains made available through the Dolphin solution for current or future I/O expansion. This adaptive infrastructure allows apportioning of PCI Express resources to different processor subsystems according to their need, adding new levels of flexibility to system administrators.
In a cluster environment, the Dolphin Express solution combines multi-host I/O expansion with clustering to create a mixed cluster and I/O solution. The Dolphin solution, comprising of PCI Express based hardware and accompanying software, is an industry first for seamlessly integrating multi-host I/O and clustering capabilities. Eliminating the need for two distinct interconnect domains and simplifying the administering of the cluster environment. Combining I/O and clustering creates the opportunity for new cluster products that utilize lower cost storage, add additional graphics capabilities and provide expanded co-processing.
“Dolphin is committed to providing innovative products to cost effectively deploy and manage high speed interconnect systems.” said Tim Miller, CEO of Dolphin Interconnect Solution, “We believe the combination of Multi-host PCI Express I/O capabilities and clustering will lower overall deployment costs of database clusters, while providing new levels of performance.”
The Multi-host I/O solution consist of Dolphin’s DXE410 PCI Express Expansion Chassis, DXH510 Host Adapter and optionally the DXS410 Switch. The solution is transparent to legacy PCI Express software providing the flexibility to use standard PCI Express hardware and software. The company provides configuration tools to enable assignment of PCI Express I/O devices to a specific host.
Traditional cluster applications are supported by Dolphin Express Software. Dolphin Express software supports various application interfaces and in particular Berkeley Sockets API. Dolphin’s socket API provides ultra low latency and high bandwidth. Clients can take full advantage of Dolphin’s PCI Express cluster capability without needing to recompile applications.
The Dolphin Multi-host I/O Solution is available either direct from Dolphin or a Dolphin business partner.
