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Critia Computer and PathScale Partner to Push Clustering in Embedded Systems
New Products Will Bring InfiniBand Clustering Capability to Embedded Form Factors
Raleigh, NC and Mountain View, CA November 14, 2005 Critia Computer and PathScale announced today at SC|05 the formation of a partnership to develop and promote Linux clustering solutions in the embedded marketplace. Critia plans to incorporate PathScales InfiniPath InfiniBand ASIC into single board computers and peripheral cards in a variety of embedded form factors.
The need for High Performance Computing, or HPC, doesnt just exist in datacenters, said Critia President Ken Boyette. There are also many embedded applications such as medical imaging, simulation rendering, and signal processing that require scalable parallel computation. PathScales InfiniPath solutions have proven themselves industry leaders in clustering performance and we intend to make those solutions available to VMEbus, CompactPCI, and other embedded systems.
The first product to emerge from the partnership is Critias IBX-4204, a 4X InfiniBand adapter in the XMC.4 form factor. XMC (VITA 42.0) is an evolution of the pervasive PCI Mezzanine Card (PMC) that adds one or more high speed connectors for supporting serial switched fabric interconnects. XMC.4 (VITA 42.4) is a supplementary protocol layer standard that defines the use of HyperTransport over the high speed connectors. Critia Computer sponsors the VITA 42.4 standard along with Curtis-Wright and Advanced Micro Devices. The XMC standards are maintained by the VMEbus International Trade Association, an ANSI-accredited standards body.
With the IBX-4204, any XMC.4-compliant host---be it based on an AMD Opteron, MIPS, or other HyperTransport-enabled processor---can readily take advantage of the very best clustering performance and can be used to build clusters that scale from two to thousands of nodes.
Critia also has plans to introduce multiprocessor single board computers with integrated InfiniPath interconnect capability.
About Critia Computer
Based in the technology-centric Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina, startup Critia Computer designs and manufactures computer modules for building high-end embedded systems. Critias products are based on industry standards and will become critical components of systems for automation, realtime control, image processing, telecommunications and networked computing. For more details, visit or telephone 1-919-821-1896.
About PathScale
Based in Mountain View, California, PathScale develops innovative software and hardware technologies that substantially increase the performance and efficiency of Linux clusters, the next significant wave in high-end computing. Applications that benefit from PathScales technologies include seismic processing, complex physical modeling, EDA simulation, molecular modeling, biosciences, econometric modeling, computational chemistry, computational fluid dynamics, finite element analysis, weather modeling, resource optimization, decision support, and data mining. PathScales investors include Adams Street Partners, Charles River Ventures, Enterprise Partners Venture Capital, CMEA Ventures, GF Private Equity LLC, ChevronTexaco Technology Ventures, and the Dow Employees Pension Plan. For more details, visit www.pathscale.com, email sales@pathscale.com, or telephone (650) 934-8100.
AMD and Opteron are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. PICMG and CompactPCI are registered trademarks of the PCI Industrial Manufacturers Group.
