Milpitas, CA -- The Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Golm and Hannover, Germany), better known as the Albert Einstein Institute (AEI), has chosen the Force10 E-Series switch/routers as the central interconnection facility for their new, high-performance computing cluster. The E-Series will enable the AEI to build a scalable, high-performance computing infrastructure needed for computationally intensive research on Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. “Research on Einstein’s general relativity theory requires massive computing resources,” said Edward Seidel, head of the Numerical Relativity Group at AEI. “We selected Force10 because its line-rate, high-density Gigabit Ethernet interconnections meet the requirements of our high-performance computing cluster.” The Albert Einstein Institute specializes in research on black holes, gravitational waves and other phenomena predicted by Einstein. The AEI, in cooperation with the Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Chicago, and Northern Illinois University, received the 2001 Gordon Bell award for the most innovative supercomputer usage. As a leading member of the European Commission-funded GridLab project, the AEI participates in the development of an easy-to-use, flexible, generic and modular Grid Application Toolkit, enabling applications to make innovative use of global computing resources. “The scalability and versatility of the Force10 E-Series platform allows the Albert Einstein Institute to grow their computing cluster in the future without compromising performance,” said Steve Mullaney, vice president of marketing at Force10. “We are excited to be helping the Institute accelerate their research in numerical relativity and the GridLab Project.”