Features:

INTERVIEW W/ ANDREW FELDMAN, VP OF MARKETING, FORCE10
by Alan Beck, Editor-in-Chief

HPCwire: For our readers who are not that familiar with Force10 Networks, why don’t we start with a brief overview of your products and services?

FELDMAN: Sure, thanks. Force10 is the pioneer in scalable resiliency for high performance switching and routing. Simply put, we are focused exclusively on GbE and 10 GbE switch/router products for demanding high performance computing and network environments.

Based on a revolutionary system architecture that delivers best-in-class resiliency and massive scalability, Force10’s E-Series switch/routers ensure predictable application performance, increase network availability and reduce operating costs.

For example, many of the world’s largest Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks depend on Force10’s products to deliver superior performance at a lower cost, including the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, or NCSA, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Hanaro Telecom, the Teragrid Project and many others.

HPCwire: How long have you been involved with the high performance computing community?

FELDMAN: We have been working with HPC customers for more than two years now. One of the attributes that originally made our products attractive to this community is the terabit scaling and non-blocking architecture of our E- Series switch/routers. We were the first company to offer a complete family of next generation 10-GbE enabled switch/routers and maintain product leadership in the industry.

At the recent SC2003 show in Phoenix, we announced general availability of the E-Series E300 switch/router, which supports up to 72 line rate GbE ports and 6 line rate 10 GbE ports. The E300 complements our larger E600 and E1200 systems, which support 168 line rate GbE ports and 336 GbE ports, or 14 line rate 10 GbE ports and 28 line rate 10 GbE ports, respectively. So, clearly HPC is our focus.

HPCwire: Can you give us a sense of how many grids you have been involved with?

FELDMAN: Sure, our accomplishments in the grid community are the result of the strong working relationship we have with each of our customers. We are proud to be able to say we are we are involved with one of the top five grids - as listed on top500.org - and overall, we have deployed over 15 grids globally, all of which are in the top 500 of the worlds largest. For a company as young as we are, we think thats a fairly impressive data point.

HPCwire: When you talk about resiliency, what do you mean? How do you define it?

FELDMAN: That’s an important question, because we are trying to capture a lot of depth in the meaning of one word. To us, network availability is something we obsess over as we compare ourselves to the industry and as we design our new EtherScale technology and add new features to FTOS, our operating system. We think network availability needs much more than just redundant physical elements in the network device itself. We think the network device needs to be self-aware to the point where the device can identify and isolate faults, and heal those faults while minimizing, if not preventing, the failure from degrading the performance of the applications running over our network infrastructure. In other words, our goal is to first reduce the likelihood of a failure, and then should a failure occur, make it transparent to network operations.

Some of our design elements, such as having individual CPUs for routing, switching and management, are an example of that philosophy integrated into the products.

HPCwire: What other customer problems are you solving?

FELDMAN: At Force10, we are committed to extraordinary products for high performance network environments. That is our mission and our focus. To this end, we think about the entire customer experience of buying, owning and operating a high performance network. What choices do they have? What problems to they need to solve? What is their pain point? For example, by working with our customers, we have built a product portfolio that represents a new level of performance and resiliency, helping to make Ethernet-based networks more predictable through high availability architecture, massive port densities and Terabit scalability.

Let me give you another example. In order to simplify network operation, we have devised a unique proactive service and support capability aimed at first helping customers avoid problems, as well as enhancing our ability to support customers during down time. We are committed to working with our customers to push the limits of what people think is possible. We want to define and establish new boundaries for our industry. We want to keep surprising this community because the HPC market is the reason why we are now a growing enterprise.

HPCwire: Thank you for your time today. How can readers get more information about Force10 Networks?

FELDMAN: We continue to expand the information available on our website: http://www.force10networks.com, where they can also register to have our news and product updates delivered to their email address. They can also call us at 1-866-571-2600.