Quadrics 10 GigE Switch Case Study - GreenLight Project by UC San Diego

Getting more computational work done for fewer watts of energy


Evolution of Information Technology and the increasing energy demands that go with higher computational power have historically been an obstacle to sustainability. Recent IDC research shows that over the past ten years the average cost to power and cool an installed base of servers has doubled . A project run by the University of California, San Diego aims to measure the energy efficiency of new technologies such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GigE) and their impact on cluster capacity and efficiency - and reduction of energy costs.
How to enable green IT computer scienceA green strategy requires various steps: monitoring and controlling the use of electricity of network-connected devices, design innovative ways to reduce energy consumption and then more monitoring and measuring to refine the process. Academia and enterprise often collaborate in this research, looking for ways to get more computational work done for fewer watts of energy. This is the scope of GreenLight, a project run by the scientists and engineers of UC San Diego, one of the greenest universities in the US. When it is built, the GreenLight Instrument will measure, monitor and help optimize the energy consumption of large-scale scientific applications from many different disciplines. What makes the project exemplary is that the cluster used to run the measurements and the monitoring has been designed to use less energy than most data centers: GreenLight consists of an eco-friendly Sun Modular Datacenter container with 8 racks of servers. When fully populated, the servers will connect to 7 edge switches via 1 Gbps links and the edge switches will connect with 10 GigE uplinks to the Quadrics TG201-XA switch, which maintains low latency and high bandwidth and ensures the end users quality of service. The immediate advantage, as Tom DeFanti, GreenLight principal investigator, explains, is that "GreenLight uses 10 Gbps over dedicated optical fiber links so end users move their clusters out of their faculty closets and into much greener configurations".

10 GigE market is already sizeable - amounting to $9.5 billion this year alone - and is poised for impressive growth going forward.

10 Gigabit Ethernet Going Mainstream

The upshot, Infonetics reported, is that the 10 GigE segment should "thrive for many years to come," even as customers are starting to pursue 40 GigE adoption plans. For what it's worth, 100 GigE looks to be a long way from mainstream. According to Infonetics, it should begin to take off in 2013.
"A majority of service providers we've spoken to are expecting to invest in 40G until the 100G market is up and running; some providers are hoping to skip the 40G phase altogether, but we don't see that being a viable option, as growing traffic demands are outstripping current capacities and 100G won't reach reasonable price points until about 2012 or 2013," said Principal Analyst and Infonetics Co-Founder Michael Howard in a statement. "When 100G Ethernet arrives, it'll be the next big thing and the most important, because it will last to at least 2025, solving traffic problems for a very long time."
What's driving 10 GigE -- and, for that matter 40 GigE -- adoption? It's the capacity, stupid.
"As corporate applications get more and more bandwidth-intensive and enterprises centralize their resources, a tremendous strain is being put on their networks," noted Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise voice and data at Infonetics Research, in a release. According to Machowinski, network managers cite a need for increased capacity as their No. 1 overall initiative.
"[I]t's no surprise...that shipments of 10 [GigE] ports are going through the roof," Machowinski said. "Ethernet switch-based 10 [GigE] port shipments, for example, grew 140 percent in 2007. Growth should remain healthy for years to come, as this is an area where buyers are putting their money where their mouths are."
Over the next few years, Infonetics projected, 40 GigE revenues will grow at a healthy 59 percent annual clip. In 2007, it said, vendors shipped slightly more than 1 million 10 GigE, 40 GigE, and 100 GigE ports on enterprise- and service provider-grade gear; by 2011, Infonetics suggested, that total will reach 7.4 mllion. --

from: http://certcities.com/editorial/news/story.asp?EditorialsID=1409 by Stephen Swoyer

Quadrics' Scalable 10 GigE Solutions

Quadrics' Scalable 10 GigE Solutions offer high-performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches for customers who want to take advantage of the increase in bandwidth that 10 Gigabit Ethernet offers together with significant reductions in price from a new generation of switches. If your organizations is looking to consolidate its application and storage networks, if you need fast, reliable and affordable switching solutions that are standards based and leverage existing competencies, Quadrics' QsTenG TG201 switch offers 480Gbps of throughput, fully non-blocking layer-2 switching, only 200ns latency, low cost copper CX4 or fibre option to reach greater distances, at affordable prices.

Advantages of 10GbE

10 Gigabit Ethernet is the natural evolution of the well-established IEEE 802.3 standard in speed and distance. It extends Ethernet's proven value set and economics to metropolitan and wide area networks by providing:

• Potentially lowest total cost of ownership (infrastructure/operational/human capital)
• Straightforward migration to higher performance levels
• Proven multi-vendor and installed base interoperability (Plug and Play)
• Familiar network management feature set
• Supports all traffic types-data, voice and video over IP
• 10 Gigabit Ethernet does not obsolete current investments in network infrastructure
• Flexibility in network design
• Ability to support jumbo or large frame sizes to reduce the network overhead

The price-performance that the combination of Gigabit and 10G bring to customers is driving increasing adoption of 10G. In general as desktops become more powerful and applications more feature-rich, it generates a lot of data/content, which necessitates a more powerful transport infrastructure of which Gigabit and 10G networks are a prime example.
Some of the applications driving this technology are Web 2.0 applications typically with multimedia content. There are specific applications in banking and finance as well as CAD applications in the manufacturing sector. Media companies using animation and high-end graphics applications are the early adopters of 10G technology in the industry.
Chandra Kopparapu, Vice President for Asia Pacific at Foundry Networks, said, “10GbE enables the use of Ethernet for transporting data, voice and video traffic within an enterprise and a carrier’s network. With 10G, companies will have the capability to provide GbE service to workstations and, eventually, to the desktop in order to support applications such as streaming video, medical imaging, centralized applications, and high-end graphics. New and upcoming bandwidth-hungry applications like streaming video, medical imaging, centralized applications, and high-end graphics will drive 10GbE technology. Verticals like entertainment and animation have shown great interest in 10G.”

Extract from: Gigabit Ethernet and beyond

Write up a case study to get up to USD 4,000 discount off your next purchased TG201!

For a limited time Quadrics is offering substantial discounts to customers who are willing to case study the Quadrics 10 Gigabit Ethernet TG201 products. For a fully developed case study (approx. 1000 words, with photos and graphics, illustrating how Quadrics 10 Gigabit Ethernet TG201 met your business challenges) we will offer you up to USD 4,000 off the cost of your next purchased 24 ports 10 Gigabit Ethernet TG201.

We welcome academic studies but we are particularly interested in case studies from the following industries: Communications, Consumer Industries & Retail, Energy, Financial Services, Government, Healthcare, Manufacturing and Transportation.

QsTenG 24-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet Switch

Industry's lowest latency - 10 Gigabit Ethernet Switch with flexible interfaces, copper CX4 and fiber XFP LR/SR.

Industry's lowest latency - 10Gb Ethernet Switch with flexible interfaces, CX4 and XFP LR/SRThe Quadrics TG201, 24-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet Switch leads the market in ultra low-latency intelligent switching, delivering cut-through latency as low as 200ns. With its robust layer-2 switching capabilities and the ubiquity of Ethernet, the Quadrics 10 Gigabit Ethernet TG201 switch is uniquely placed to service the ever-demanding needs of the Data Centres, High utilization virtualized servers, Campus network core switching and storage consolidation.

QsTenG TG201 Features

• 480Gbps of throughput
• Fully non-blocking layer-2 switching
• Industry's lowest latency - 200ns
• Option to use fibre with XFP pluggable modules enabling LR/SR media
• Option to lower TCO by using CX4 ports for in-rack connectivity

Ethernet or Ether-not

Below is an extract from an interesting article on the Register by Timothy Prickett Morgan regarding Liquid Computing and their decision to embrace 10 Gigabit Ethernet:

"It is a testament to the architecture that you can switch out the communications system and not touch the architecture," says Miller. And like many others, Miller sees 10 Gigabit Ethernet moving ahead "at a breakneck pace" and InfiniBand being relegated to a protocol for HPC clusters, "even though some people are trying to make a go of it as a unified fabric." If InfiniBand can't get established in the data center, IQInterconnect, no matter how slick, had even less of a chance.

SO, in the meantime, if you need to buy a 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch (24, 32, 48, 96 ports?) go and check Quadrics website, last November Quadrics announced $300 per-port price tag for its 24-Port CX4 10Gbps Ethernet Switch.