Linux Networx zooms into supercomputing

Linux Networx recently launched the first of its Linux Supersystems for high-performance computing environments.

The LS Series is a cluster of AMD Opteron-based servers that the company says is focused on industry, government and university sectors. Linux Networx says it has more than 150 customers. Fifty-five percent of those customers are companies like Boeing, John Deere, Audi and Shell; the remaining 45% of Linux Networx’s customers are represented by organizations like Sandia National Laboratories, Harvard University and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The LS Series includes two families – the LS-1, which is built for performance with custom and third-party applications, and the LS-X, which is focused on legacy supercomputing environments and computationally intense applications.

The LS-1 is designed for mid-range users who may have no special cluster expertise. The LS-1 scales from eight to 128 single- or dual-core processors. An eight-node LS-1 cluster starts at $40,000. It can scale up to as many as 128 nodes. It will be available early in 2006.

According to Linux Networx, the LS-X eliminates the performance bottlenecks experienced by first-generation clusters. It has an integrated switch that reduces cabling by 60% and increases serviceability and airflow. The LS-X can scale up to as many as 6,044 nodes and is expected to ship next month.

Both systems support both single- and dual-core processors. The LS-1 server cluster can be interconnected with Gigabit Ethernet, Myricom’s Myrinet or InfiniBand; the LS-X can be interconnected with Gigabit Ethernet or InfiniBand. They ship with Linux Networx’s ClusterWorks installation, monitoring and management software. The servers run SuSE Enterprise Linux Services from Novell.