At the Intel Developer Forum this week, Appro, a provider of high performance enterprise computing systems, will be previewing cluster technology using the soon-to-be-released quad-core Xeon processors.

Appro will demonstrate two 1U dual socket Hyperservers cluster nodes based on Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processors 5300 series (code name "Clovertown"), using Intel 5000P chipset with dual independent system bus connections running at speeds up to 1333 MHz. This Xen Virtualization Cluster Demo provides a total of 16 cores connected with two 10 Gbps dual-port Mellanox PCIe InfiniBand Adapters running NAS Parallel Benchmark Application.

In addition, the Basement Supercomputing Baseline Cluster Suite (BSC) will be used to run other standard benchmarks on both nodes. The BSC includes fully integrated and optimized collection of standard cluster tools including Warewulf, Sun Grid Engine, ganglia, and various MPIs. Benchmark results will be released in November 2006, Clovertown launch at the Supercomputing conference in Tampa.

Appro servers based on the Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor provide quad-core performance for general purpose servers along with cooling and density improvements from the new Intel Xeon 5300 Processor-based servers. In addition, it boosts system utilization with higher performance, providing more headroom for server virtualization than a conventional 2-way standard high volume server platform.

"By offering reliable, faster, energy-efficient processing capabilities with increased system performance packaged with outstanding cluster solution integration, customers can build a consolidated and simplified infrastructure that is easy to scale and an ideal solution for high performance and enterprise datacenter consolidation," said John Lee, director of Customer and Engineering Services at Appro.

"Mellanox's 10 and 20 Gbps InfiniBand adapters complement Appro's introduction of multi-socket, Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor server solutions by providing the necessary I/O cluster bandwidth to efficiently utilize the available compute power of each node," said Thad Omura, vice president of Product Marketing for Mellanox Technologies.

"Companies such as Appro are developing advanced products, based on the Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor 5300 series have the potential to change the shape of enterprise and technical computing datacenters," said Jim Pappas, director of initiative marketing for Intel's Digital Enterprise Group. "New platforms based on Intel Xeon processors offer industry's first quad- core standard high volume server processor providing breakthrough performance and capabilities per watt for the ultimate in powerful, dense and energy efficient servers for datacenters and high performance computing environments."