SCIENCE

QLogic has announced that it has achieved class-leading ANSYS FLUENT 12.1 benchmark performance on IBM iDataPlex servers running QLogic 7300 Series InfiniBand host adapters and Intel 5670 processors. The results show that QLogic TrueScale InfiniBand fabrics deliver the industry's highest published performance with ANSYS FLUENT applications.

ANSYS is the leading provider of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) applications in the industry. The ANSYS FLUENT benchmark suite is one of the most recognized in the HPC marketplace, with most leading server vendors publishing their results on the ANSYS benchmark site. QLogic TrueScale QDR InfiniBand achieved "best-in-class" ANSYS FLUENT 12.1 benchmark results with Intel's latest Westmere processors at scale.

"Processor speed and network performance are critical for top performance of ANSYS CFD applications, and QLogic's leadership in documenting results on the latest IB gear helps our customers select the best hardware configurations for these applications," said Dipankar Choudhury, vice president of product strategy, ANSYS. "We are glad to see hardware manufacturers like IBM, Intel, and QLogic pushing the performance envelope to add value to our solutions."

"Achieving best in class performance on these benchmark tests further demonstrates iDataPlex's leadership in energy-efficient, high performance, integrated solutions," said Connie Borton, project executive, System x HPC Marketing, IBM. "We see the value in these tests and the results show continued improvements, enabling our clients to benefit when running their HPC workloads."

The test was performed with a 32-node/384-core HPC cluster consisting of IBM iDataPlex servers running Intel Xeon 5670 "Westmere" processors, QLogic 7300 Series QDR InfiniBand adapters and QLogic 12000 Series QDR InfiniBand switches. The results were based on a single plane/rail InfiniBand fabric configuration, and beat most of the published results for systems with dual plane InfiniBand configurations from other server and InfiniBand vendors. QLogic's TrueScale performance advantage averages 16 percent for the three largest benchmark models versus previously-published single-rail configurations. Versus dual-rail implementations, TrueScale's single-rail performance is more than four percent faster for these three models, but with essentially half the InfiniBand equipment.

"The FLUENT benchmarks demonstrate the real-world advantages of Intel's 5600-series Xeon(R) processor performance in clustered computing environments," said Rajeeb Hazra, general manager, High Performance Computing, Intel. "We are happy to work with IBM and QLogic to deliver a new standard of performance with ANSYS FLUENT."

"These tests reveal that QLogic TrueScale InfiniBand delivers best-in-class performance at scale with an industry-standard benchmark," said Joseph Yaworski, director of Global Alliances and Solution Marketing at QLogic. "By delivering performance at an entirely other level, we believe QLogic demonstrates the superiority of the TrueScale architecture in HPC environments."