Voltaire, a leading provider of high performance InfiniBand solutions, introduced today a new family of switches that deliver high performance and low latency at a dramatically low price point. The Voltaire ISR 9024 twenty-four port switch family is ideal for powering small clusters or as a building block for large clusters in high performance computing (HPC) environments and enterprise data centers. Voltaire also announced the immediate availability of its InfiniBand software stack for 64-bit computing platforms. The Voltaire ISR 9024 meets customer demand for a high performance, price competitive alternative to proprietary interconnect technologies. The fully non-blocking switch features throughput of 480 gigabits per second (Gbps) and latency as low as 140 nanoseconds with a list price of $8,850 for a managed switch and $7,450 for unmanaged. At a price that descends to nearly $300 per port, InfiniBand solutions cost less than any other high speed interconnects. The Voltaire ISR 9024 uses a powerful CPU to run the VoltaireVision™ InfiniBand Fabric Management software that is embedded in the switch. This enables fast fabric initiation and real- time management of large InfiniBand fabrics. "The Voltaire ISR 9024 changes the economics of InfiniBand switching for HPC clusters and distributed databases in the enterprise," said Arun Taneja, Founder and Consulting Analyst, The Taneja Group. "With switch prices at roughly three hundred dollars per port, Voltaire is paving the way for accelerated InfiniBand deployment." "Voltaire's extensive experience gained through working with customers such as Mississippi State University and Sandia National Laboratories has enabled us to develop solutions that correctly address the performance and scalability needs of HPC clusters and grid computing environments," said Ronnie Kenneth, chairman and CEO, Voltaire, Inc. "With the ISR 9024 product family, we continue to deliver on the promise of InfiniBand at an even lower price." The Voltaire ISR 9024 offers several options of port mixes including twenty-four 4X ports, four 12X ports and twelve 4X ports with copper and optical interfaces. The Voltaire ISR 9024 can be managed with the standards-based VoltaireVision™ InfiniBand Fabric Management Software or with customers' existing management systems using standard protocols such as SNMP or InfiniBand baseboard management. The Voltaire ISR 9024 will be available in Q1 2004 and will be showcased in the Voltaire booth # 2502 at SuperComputing 2003. Voltaire InfiniBand Software Available for 64-Bit Computing Voltaire also announced the availability of its InfiniBand software stack for 64-bit computing platforms. Available today, the software is proven and tested to support Intel Itanium 2-based servers and AMD Opteron-based servers. Voltaire's InfiniBand solutions complement the robust processing power of 64-bit platforms. The combination of Voltaire's InfiniBand software stack for 64-bit platforms and its InfiniBand switching solutions enables end users to maximize the capabilities of Intel Itanium2 and AMD Opteron-based clusters. This is ideal for applications such as visualization that perform complex calculations while transferring large amounts of data between cluster nodes.