* Start-up Ammasso speeds up RDMA-enabled Gigabit adapter
Ammasso last week boosted the performance of its RDMA-enabled Gigabit Ethernet adapter, broadened the range of operating systems supported and updated the remote management capabilities.
The technology called Remote Direct Memory Access allows one computer to directly place data into the memory of another computer while minimizing the impact of the operation on the main system processor. Adapters that support RDMA can therefore speed up communications between computers over a network.
Ammasso says that Version 1.1 of its 1100 model is 20% faster than the first version, which has been shipping since June. Ammasso also says 50 organizations are using its adapter today, and their feedback helped to shape the improvements available in the new version.
The new version adds support for the AMD Opteron processor for both 32-bit and 64-bit applications. It adds support for several Linux distributions as well, including Red Hat Linux 9, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 WS/ES/AS, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 and SuSE Professional 9.0.
For servers in large clusters, Version 1.1 also now can enable remote booting and building of system images.
Ammasso’s Web site indicates that while performance improvements provided by RDMA depend on the application, users should expect communications to move five to 10 times faster than on standard Ethernet.
Ammasso is a young company, founded in 2002 by people with experience in clustering technologies. The company made its debut with the first version of the 1100 adapter in May:
https://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/lans/2004/0517lan2.html
The new version of the adapter is available to current customers at no charge.
