Cluster Computing:

DATADIRECT STORAGE SYSTEMS SELECTED FOR NCSA CLUSTER

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is creating one of the most powerful computer clusters in the world with help of DataDirect Networks. The cluster is expected to help boost productivity for the researchers who use NCSA computing facilities to investigate many of science's most important questions - from the large-scale structure of the universe to the nature of matter itself.

DataDirect worked closely with Dell and NCSA to help design a cluster architecture capable of delivering 17.7 Teraflops (17.7 trillion operations per second) of processing power and over 140 Terabytes (140 trillion bytes) of storage. The storage architecture is based on the award winning DataDirect S2A, the world's fastest storage controller.

26 DataDirect S2A8000 heads will form a storage cluster capable of delivering peak bandwidth in excess of 20 Gigabytes/second and serving 1,450 dual- processor Dell PowerEdge servers running Red Hat Linux.

"We are very pleased that NCSA entrusted DataDirect with such a critical and high profile storage network system design," said Alex Bouzari, CEO of DataDirect Networks. "With half of the top six high performance computing sites in the world and dozens of the fastest HPC systems getting significant performance, cost and scalability benefits from DataDirect's storage and clustering solutions, we continue to provide the absolute best in networked storage technology to our valued customers."

"NCSA's computing resources are used to investigate fundamental issues in fields from astronomy to zoology, and these research studies often work with huge data sets," said NCSA Director Dan Reed. "We found that DataDirect offered the storage technology needed to enable this critical scientific research."

"High performance computing (HPC) users are increasingly asking for storage solutions and clusters that cost-effectively deliver high bandwidth and high capacity to their networks," Said Paul Bloch, President of DataDirect Networks. "The combination of DataDirect's award winning S2A storage controller technology and Dell's industry leadership and tremendous manufacturing capabilities, HPC customers will enjoy the best technology for their clusters at better price points than ever before."

At the heart of the new cluster is DataDirect S2A8000 - the world's highest performance parallel storage controller. With its built-in distributed hardware RAID, a massive cache (up to 20GB), storage and LUN virtualization, parallel Fibre Channel port technology and support for hundreds of terabyte of FC or SATA storage, the S2A8000 is the enabling component behind some of the worlds leading HPC systems.

Other substantial DataDirect S2A HPC customers include: Lawrence Livermore National Labs, Sandia National Labs, NCSA, NASA Goddard, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, Argonne National Laboratory, US Army Research Lab, NOAA Forecast Systems Lab, NCAR, and DKRZ Germany.

About DataDirect Networks, Inc.

DataDirect Networks is the world's leading provider of storage networking solutions for HPC and Rich Media. Providing clustering, storage networking, SAN and SAN/NAS convergence solutions for government, defense, life sciences, broadcasting, digital production, oil, and gas industries. For more information, contact DataDirect Networks at (818) 700-7600 or visit http://www.datadirectnet.com.