PathScale, the developer of innovative software and hardware solutions to accelerate high performance computing, today announced the release of version 1.2 of its InfiniPath software for the PathScale InfiniPath InfiniBand cluster interconnect. This latest InfiniPath software release, with OpenIB support, delivers significant performance improvements that extend PathScale's InfiniBand technology leadership. In December of 2005, PathScale became the first InfiniBand vendor to ship a supported version of the OpenIB software stack. This new release supports an updated version of the OpenIB software stack that offers substantial improvements in performance and adds support for new upper level protocols (ULPs). Industry standard benchmarks on this OpenIB release demonstrate that PathScale InfiniPath enables the highest performance for users deploying OpenIB based applications. "With InfiniBand quickly becoming the networking architecture of choice for organizations that are deploying Linux clusters and high-end storage systems, the need for a stable, high-performance, fully supported network stack has never been more critical," said Scott Metcalf, CEO of PathScale. "Based on proven industry standards, the PathScale InfiniPath adapters connect into a standard InfiniBand fabric, enabling end-user organizations to build highly scalable clusters based on low-cost, low latency interconnect technology. InfiniPath interconnected clusters enable scientists, engineers, and researchers to be much more productive by improving their time to solution for complex simulation and modeling applications." OpenIB was developed by the OpenIB Alliance, an industry association whose members are chartered to deliver a single, open-source software stack for deploying InfiniBand networks. The OpenIB Alliance, founded in June 2004, is comprised of leading computer technology vendors and end-user organizations. The OpenIB software standard ensures interoperability between hardware products from all InfiniBand suppliers. This prevents vendor lock-in, promotes competition in the market and enables PathScale to drive broad adoption of InfiniBand by delivering the most scalable and efficient solutions for high performance computing. "PathScale was an early supporter of the OpenIB Alliance and brought a fully OpenIB compliant interconnect technology to market at the end of 2005," said Bill Boas, vice-chair of OpenIB. "PathScale's unwavering support has helped drive acceptance of the InfiniBand architecture across both technology vendors and end-user customers." The latest OpenIB software release, available on PathScale's Web site in about 2 weeks, offers the highest performance on all the well-known metrics that measure latency and bandwidth. Applications that use MPI, IP over IB, TCP, UDP or SDP will find that the PathScale InfiniPath InfiniBand adapter offers the highest performance across all of these important protocols. PathScale is committed to maintaining its leadership performance on a fully supported, commercial version of the OpenIB software stack. The PathScale InfiniPath InfiniBand interconnect helps deliver on the promise of Linux cluster computing and InfiniBand by significantly lowering communications latency, increasing effective bandwidth, and improving the performance of complex applications. The technology is enabling scientists, engineers and researchers to solve the most challenging classes of computational problems on a scale previously unreachable by commodity clusters. The InfiniPath InfiniBand interconnect is ideally suited for applications from weather modeling and aerospace design to drug discovery and oil and gas research. Today, the InfiniPath InfiniBand interconnect is used by leading scientific and engineering organizations in both the private and government sectors.