Intel ships Atom processors.  Intel (INTC) announced the availability of the latest Intel Atom processor-based platform, formerly codenamed “Cedar Trail.” This latest platform is designed to provide small, compact, on-the-go computing with great battery life.  The new design’s dedicated media engine enables full 1080p high-definition playback of videos and Blu-Ray content and includes additional digital display and output options including HDMI and DisplayPort. The dual-core Intel Atom processor N2600 and Intel Atom processor N2800 are paired with the Intel NM10 Express Chipset and feature a small form factor package size that saves system board real estate and enables thinner netbook designs. Devices with the new Atom processor will be available in early 2012 from major OEMs including: Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Toshiba.

IO selected by Solugenix. IO announced that it now provides IT consulting firm Solugenix with data center as a service at IO Phoenix, via its modular technology platform IO Anywhere. IO Anywhere adds capacity through data center as a service, which is delivered in a range of colocation cabinets, shared and dedicated modules, multi-megawatt, customer-dedicated data centers, and solutions that are deployed as a product. ”Today’s traditional data centers will soon become obsolete when you consider all the benefits modularity has to offer,” Shashi Jasthi, CEO at Solugenix said in a statement. “After reviewing a number of solutions, IO’s next-generation modular technology puts us at a significant advantage from a scalability, cost and reliability standpoint, to better support the dynamic needs of our IT customers.”

Fire at Airtel data center in Mumbai India.  A fire was reported Tuesday at the Bharti Airtel data center that took down mobile network service across the city for several hours.  The fire gutted the server room, damaging the entire electrical installation. Worst hit were data services offered by the company, particularly a large number of corporate customers from Mumbai. Airtel responded with several tweets throughout the past few days and a company spokesperson said, “a technical outage has affected our network in the western region, resulting in disruption of some services. We are working toward rectifying the outage at the earliest. We deeply regret the inconvenience caused to our customers.”

Fortrust launches cloud service.  Denver-based Fortrust announced the much anticipated launch of its Managed Cloud Infrastructure Services (MCIS).  Targeted for the enterprise, the MCIS solution will deliver an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform for on-demand computing and storage resources.  MCIS will offer a 100 percent SLA, security and governance compliance, along with the reliability that the enterprise needs to manage their critical applications. Components of the solution include private cloud services, hybrid clouds and disaster recovery cloud services.

Interxion re-certifies Pan-European ISO 270001.  Interxion (INXN) announced that it has achieved recertification of the internationally recognized ISO 27001 (Information Security and Business Continuity) standard for all 11 of its European country operations. The re-certification demonstrates Interxion’s ability to provide an integrated solution for multi-country customers in 28 data centers in 13 of Europe’s leading business and consumer hubs. The ISO 27001 audit and certification process focuses on every aspect of the business, including physical infrastructure, site security and access management, personnel capabilities, communications and operations, legal compliance criteria, and back-up and disaster recovery systems. “Our customers can be confident in the peerless connectivity we provide because we offer a uniform, best-in-class blueprint in design, build, operations and service. Our successful recertification in ISO 27001 is further evidence of our commitment to providing reliable, secure best-in-class data centre services   to our ever growing digital media, financial services and cloud-based communities  .” said Kevin Dean, Chief Marketing Officer Interxion.

Juniper selected by OnLive.  Juniper Networks (JNPR) announced that OnLive, the pioneer of on-demand, instant-play video games, has upgraded its data center infrastructure with a simplified Juniper Networks architecture of routing, switching and security solutions. OnLive selected Juniper in its data centers to support massive amounts of bandwidth for voice, video and data from the cloud to customers using a simplified, integrated design that requires fewer devices and interconnections. “The number-one factor that drove us to Juniper Networks is the value proposition – the bang for the buck we get from our core routers, switches and firewalls,” said Darrell Gentry, director of systems planning, OnLive. “Juniper Networks data center network architecture has enabled us to deliver a high-end gaming experience from the cloud simply and securely. Having a massively scalable network from Juniper Networks is the foundation of our continued innovation and success.” OnLive will utilize Juniper EX4200 Ethernet Switches, MX960 3D Universal Edge Routers, SRX3400 Series Services Gateway, and has plans to further simplify their data centers with the Juniper QFabric solution.

Intel announces new SATA Solid-State Drive.  Intel (INTC) announced its latest solid-state drive (SSD), the Intel Solid-State Drive 710 Series, a purpose-built Multi-Level Cell (MLC) data center SSD and replacement for the Intel X25-E Extreme SSD. ”The Intel SSD 710 Series gives enterprise data center and embedded users extreme endurance and performance, enabled by Intel’s High Endurance Technology based on Intel 25nm MLC NAND technology,” said Rob Crooke, Intel vice president and general manager of the Intel Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group. “Intel SSDs are widely deployed in the data center due to their performance, reliability and value. Our latest SSD product family offers more than 30 times the write endurance of our current MLC SSDs, plus improved performance and new features, such as power-loss data protection and surplus arrays of NAND for enhanced reliability.” At 100GB, 200GB and 300GB capacities the SSD 710 achieves write endurance of up to 1.1 Petabytes and is targeted for I/O-starved applications. It also includes increased reliability and security features. At the Intel Developer Forum last week Intel also discussed said the future of computing is being accelerated, citing the impact of multi- and many-core computing hitting the mainstream and new developments in extreme scale computing.

Cisco acquires Versly. Cisco announced that it has acquired privately-held Versly.  Versly integrates collaboration capabilities via a plug-in into Microsoft Office applications, simplifying the way people work by enabling more effective collaboration around content in documents, spreadsheets, presentations and email. As one of Cisco’s top five priorities, collaboration is what Versly offers – directly in Microsoft Office applications. The acquisition will expand the Cisco collaboration architecture to change the way businesses work and Versley employees will be integrated into Cisco’s Collaboration Software Group (CSG). “With this acquisition we’re enhancing our collaboration offerings and improving the user experience by integrating social technologies within the business applications individuals and teams use at work,” said Murali Sitaram, vice president and general manager, Collaboration Software Group, Cisco. “Furthermore, the integration with Versly will drive productivity improvements for organizations and their knowledge workers, many of whom are among the 600 million Microsoft Office users.”

Savvis Symphony announces VPDC Premier. Savvis, now a CenturyLink company, announced a new Premier service profile for their Symphony VPDC (Virtual Private Data Center) enterprise-class cloud solution. As a top-tier service, the Symphony VPDC Premier combines a high degree of resource commitment and priority, security, redundancy, support and performance needed for large-scale, essential enterprise applications. With assurance of application performance on a continuous basis in the cloud, customers can optimize their infrastructure in many dimensions, including compute services, bandwidth, storage and security. Some of the attributes reserved for the Premier service include three-tier information life-cycle management, not being subject to CPU over-subscription scenarios, fully managed 24/7 virtual servers, and pooled, fixed server load balancers. ”From our survey of the cloud market, we don’t believe there is another provider that can offer the kind of robustness, dependability, efficiency and peace-of-mind represented in our Premier offering,” said Bryan Doerr, chief technology officer at Savvis. “The Premier option broadens the range of Symphony VPDC service profiles to meet evolving market demands and makes our public cloud applicable to service needs ranging from test/dev to turnkey virtual data centers.”

Viridity to incorporate Intel DCIM. Viridity Software announced that Intel Data Center Manager SDK will be incorporated into their EnergyCenter software. “The relationship with Intel and the addition of its technology into our EnergyCenter software is a critical next step as it provides the ability to communicate directly with the hardware and to expand the capabilities we can offer, as servers continue to become more sophisticated,” said Michael Tresh, Director of Product Management and Marketing at Viridity Software. “Simply put, Viridity can now provide customers with the ability to monitor and manage data center assets at a much more granular level, as well as offer a head-start on supporting and managing future technology.”

Embrane secures $18 million. Distributed software platform Embrane announced that it has received $18 million in Series-B financing, led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Embrane delivers the first distributed software platform that powers high-performance, elastic, virtual network services on-demand. Currently in Beta and set to launch later this year, Embrane will use the funding to continue to innovate in the area of virtual network services as well as to ramp up sales and marketing.  “While most of the attention around building cloud infrastructures has focused on virtualizing compute and storage, the network has been long overlooked,” said Pete Sonsini, partner at NEA. “Until now, the network has been far too rigid, expensive and limited in its ability to deliver multi-tenancy options at scale – particularly when it comes to network services. Embrane has tackled this and will enable both cloud service providers and enterprises to procure, provision, grow, and shrink network services on-demand.”

Intel to acquire Fulcrum Microsystems. Intel (INTC) announced it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Fulcrum Microsystems, a privately held fabless semiconductor company that designs Ethernet switch silicon for data center network providers. “Intel is transforming from a leading server technology company to a comprehensive data center provider that offers computing, storage and networking building blocks,” said Kirk Skaugen, Intel vice president and general manager, Data Center Group. The Fulcrum portfolio includes the FocalPoint Ethernet Switch Chip family, FocalPoint Platform Reference Designs, FocalPoint Software, and PivotPoint SPI-4.2 Switch Chip family. Fulcrum’s customers include Arista Networks. “Customers in Web, financial services, technical and high-performance computing market segments appreciate the performance advantages Arista offers with our Extensible Operating System combined with switches based on Fulcrum Microsystems silicon,” said Andy Bechtolsheim, founder, chief development officer and chairman of Arista Networks.

Total Site Solutions selected for Marietta project.  Fortress International Group (FIGI) announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Total Site Solutions, has been selected to provide design and construction management services for the redevelopment of a 399,000 square foot mission-critical facility located in Atlanta, GA. The redevelopment project at the 55 Marietta Telco hub was announced in May 2011. Ken Baudry and Mike Warren with Grubb & Ellis Company’s National Data Center Practice Group will assist in the redevelopment and leasing effort. “We are extremely pleased to start this exciting redevelopment project and to be working with Total Site Solutions, a firm with unparalleled tenure and experience in the design and construction of mission-critical facilities.” said  Rece Morgan, Senior Vice President of building owner Westplan. “The first phase of our project redevelopment will deliver two new Meet-Me-Rooms and fiber optic backbones to provide carrier-to-carrier and carrier-to-tenant traffic. Phase two will deliver 20 megawatts of additional electrical capacity, along with central generator and cooling plants. Rack-ready space will be offered to tenants with options from 100 to 200 watts per square foot. Powered shell space will also be offered for customers who prefer to design and construct their own space.”

Extreme adds Gigabit Ethernet switches.  Extreme Networks (EXTR) expanded its line of enterprise edge networking solutions with the launch of a new family of value-based Gigabit Ethernet fixed switching solutions. The new Ethernet Access Switches (EAS) aim to deliver versatility and cost effectiveness for network access and come in both PoE Plus and non-PoE 24-port models.  ”The market for Layer 2 has been the fastest Ethernet port/revenue growth segment over the last year, proving that today’s connectivity needs require a broad and diverse range of products,” said Alan Weckel, director of enterprise switching for the Dell’Oro Group. “By adding new lines of Layer 2 fixed switches to a vendor’s portfolio, a vendor can address the need for cost-optimized access complementing its more sophisticated Enterprise edge and core network portfolios.” The new EAS switches are expected to ship this month, with the EAS-100 beginning at $995 and the EAS-200 at $1,995.

SGI launches InfiniteStorage 5500. SGI introduced InfiniteStorage (IS) 5500, a next generation storage platform. Built with an innovative modular design for extreme density and scalability, the IS5500 offers exceptional performance for high-bandwidth and high-IOPS applications with enterprise-class reliability. It is targeted at big-bandwidth applications such as full-motion video, data analytics and VMware and HyperV environments. The IS5500 can intermix multiple drive types and enclosure densities in a single, scalable system, and features fully redundant I/O paths with automated failover, dual-active, hot-swappable controllers and components, mirrored data cache with battery backup that is de-staged to flash, and hardware-based RAID 6 for maximum performance.  SGI also announced that NASA’s Pleiades supercomputer system, built with Altix ICE technology, has achieved more than one petaflop per second in sustained compute performance and moved into the number 7 spot on the June 2011 Top500 list of supercomputer sites in the world.  In this video SGI CTO Dr. Eng Lim Goh explains how they are collaborating with Intel to achieve an exaflop by 2018.

Intel equipped to lead path to Exascale computing. At the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC), Kirk Skaugen, Intel (INTC) vice president and general manager of the Data Center Group, outlined the company’s vision to achieve ExaFLOP/s performance by the end of this decade. An ExaFLOP/s is quintillion computer operations per second, hundreds times more than today’s fastest supercomputers. “While Intel Xeon processors are the clear architecture of choice for the current TOP500 list of supercomputers, Intel is further expanding its focus on high-performance computing by enabling the industry for the next frontier with our MIC (Many Integrated Core) architecture for petascale and future exascale workloads,” said Skaugen. “Intel is uniquely equipped with unparalleled manufacturing technologies, new architecture innovations and a familiar software programming environment that will bring us closer to this exciting exascale goal.” Addressing the significant increase in power consumption needs, Skaugen explained that Intel and European researchers have established three labs with three goals: to create a sustained partner presence in Europe; take advantage of the growing relevance of European high-performance computing (HPC) research; and exponentially grow capabilities in computational science, engineering and strategic computing. Intel also products from SGI, Dell, HP, IBM, Colfax and Super Micro, all of which are working with Intel to plan products based on “Knights Corner,” the code name for the first Intel MIC product.

Hardcore and Super Micro demonstrate Liquid Blade Server.  Hardcore Computer joined Super Micro Computer at the 2011 International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) in Hamburg, Germany Monday where they showcased its revolutionary Liquid Blade server. Liquid Blade employs Hardcore Computer’s patented total liquid submersion cooling technology.“Hardcore Computer’s Liquid Blade total submersion technology is the future of high-performance computing and general data center cooling.” It is an elegant, extremely energy efficient solution that allows for peak system performance,” said CTO and Co-Founder of Hardcore Computer Chad Attlesey. “Our patented liquid submersion cooling also allows our Detonator workstations to deliver dual 4.8GHz Intel Westmere CPUs on a custom platform engineered for speed and reliability.”

NetApp E5400 benchmarked and enhanced.  NetApp (NTAP) announced that the E5400 has been benchmarked for use with the Lustre file system, an open-sourced high-performance file system used by the majority of organizations on the Supercomputer 500 list. In a combined testbed NetApp and Whamcloud used a 4U storage system to achieve 5GB/s for read performance and 3.5GB/s for write performance with the E5400. This combination enables customers with a 40U rack to achieve up to 50GB/s in read performance per rack. “Teaming with NetApp to provide expanded support options for Lustre environments gives a distinct advantage to our HPC customers,” said Brent Gorda, CEO, Whamcloud. “We’re extremely excited with the benchmarking of the E5400 with Lustre in the Lawrence Livermore Hyperion test bed. Lustre is gaining in importance within the HPC community, and working closely with NetApp allows our two companies to deliver outstanding support services, ensuring that customers get the most out of their Lustre environments.” New features available on the E5400 include support for three drive enclosures and multiple drive technologies, as well as scalability to 600 drives per 40U. A New 40Gb InfiniBand interface option is available and can be integrated into InfiniBand infrastructures for flexibility in any high-performance storage network.

Salesforce.com invests in Japan to grow Cloud 2. Salesforce.com (CRM) announced its latest strategic investments in Japan. The goal of these investments is to drive the continued growth of Japan’s Cloud 2 industry and accelerate the availability of locally developed social, mobile, and open cloud computing services. Salesforce.com will invest in a Tokyo data center with NTT Communications and further the development of Ruby programming language in collaboration with Ruby creator Yukihiro Matsumoto. Salesforce.com plans to make an investment of approximately 223 million yen (approximately $2.7 million) in Toyota Media Service Co., which oversees the Toyota Motor Corporation’s global cloud platform development. “Salesforce.com remains committed to Japan and to growing the Cloud 2 economy globally,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “Through our investments, we hope to inspire and incent Japan’s innovators to transform Japanese businesses with social, mobile, and open cloud computing.”

Intel creates AppUp on hybrid cloud.  Intel (INTC) launched the Intel AppUp Small Business Service, an innovative service running on the Intel Hybrid Cloud platform that enables server manufacturers, software vendors, and service providers to offer small businesses key advantages of cloud computing with applications and data running on their own premises. The new offering at Intel consists of a server, a catalog of prepackaged small business applications from a range of software providers, and Intel-developed software to securely manage and track use of the application software.  ”We developed the Intel AppUp Small Business Service to build a foundation on which the industry can innovate and provide small business customers with a more convenient, secure, and high-performance experience,” said Bridget Karlin, general manager, Intel Hybrid Cloud. “Small businesses are the ultimate beneficiaries because this service gives them a compelling new option for improving their business results through IT.This Intel-based solution comes ready to use, and doesn’t require their own IT staff or the capital cost of a server.” Available now to qualified IT service providers and MSPs in North America and India the platform includes a Lenovo ThinkServer TS200v and a white box server.

SOASTA launches two CloudTest editions.  SOASTA announced that it has added two new editions to its line of CloudTest solutions: CloudTest Enterprise Edition and CloudTest Standard Edition. The Enterprise edition is for performance testing multiple applications across global enterprises while the Standard edition addresses the market need for more agile and affordable performance testing from within the firewall. “With the addition of CloudTest Enterprise and CloudTest Standard, we are adding ‘bookends’ to our current offerings — a comprehensive performance testing solution for enterprises, as well as a more agile solution for internal-only performance testing teams. Regardless of the edition used, all CloudTest customers get the scalable testing with real-time resolution that SOASTA is known for,” said SOASTA CEO Tom Lounibos.

Wyse selected by top-ranked hospital for cloud client.  Wyse announced another successful customer implementation at Seattle Children’s Hospital in Seattle, WA. “We wanted the technology to be so fast, pervasive, and intuitive for our staff that it was almost invisible to our patients,” explains Mike Kindle, Sr. Director of Enterprise Architecture at Seattle Children’s. “As soon as we identified VDI-basd desktop as our approach, we knew we wanted Citrix and Wyse as our partners.  The partnership between the companies and the integration of their technologies made us confident that they would work together to help us get the solution we wanted.” The selected solution combines 3,000 Wyse Xenith next-generation zero-client devices with Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp.  The hospital estimates that over the next five years this implementation will save them an estimated $1.2 million of IT staff time, $6 million in PC replacement costs, and $1 million in energy cost.

Intel reinvents transistors in 3-D. Intel (INTC) announced a significant breakthrough in the evolution of the transistor, the microscopic building block of modern electronics. Called Tri-Gate, Intel will use a three-dimensional structure in high-volume manufacturing at the 22 nanometer (nm) node in an Intel chip codenamed “Ivy Bridge”. “The performance gains and power savings of Intel’s unique 3-D Tri-Gate transistors are like nothing we’ve seen before,” said Mark Bohr, Intel Senior Fellow. “This milestone is going further than simply keeping up with Moore’s Law. The low-voltage and low-power benefits far exceed what we typically see from one process generation to the next. It will give product designers the flexibility to make current devices smarter and wholly new ones possible. We believe this breakthrough will extend Intel’s lead even further over the rest of the semiconductor industry.” The 22nm 3-D Tri-Gate transistors provide up to 37 percent performance increase at low voltage versus Intel’s 32nm planar transistors. The new transistors consume less than half the power when at the same performance as 2-D planar transistors on 32nm chips.

ARM Memory delivers 90 percent utilization efficiency. ARM (ARMH) announced the release of its fourth generation memory interface solution, comprising the Dynamic Memory Controller (DMC-400) and an ARM Artisan DDR PHY hard macro, targeting high performance, low latency SoC (System on a Chip) applications. Mean primarily for the ARM Cortex-A series processors the controller and PHY (40nm) have already been licensed by a number of major customers such as LG Electronics. The DMC-400 includes advanced memory scheduling to deliver an industry-leading memory utilization efficiency in excess of 90 percent across multiple memory channels as well as integrate with AMBA interfaces, sharing a system-wide QoS that guarantees bandwidth and latency contracts from processor though to external memory. ARM also announced the the release of version 5.0 of the ARM Compiler, and the availability of the ARM DS-5 Professional Edition, which replaces the ARM RVDS toolkit as the reference software development toolchain for ARM processor-based ASICs and ASSP devices.

Ixia Launches Enterprise Testing Solution – Ixia (NASDAQ: XXIA), a leading global provider of converged IP network test solutions, today announced simplified and flexible testing solutions that meet the needs of evolving enterprise data centers. Ixia’s latest IxNetworkTM v6.00 test application introduces a new, intuitive graphical user interface (GUI), productivity tools, and automated test suites. Ixia says its new software overcomes enterprise testing barriers such as steep learning curves, insufficient test reproducibility, and poor return on investment (ROI).

Force 10 integrates Intel cloud access software. Force 10 Networks announced that they have entered into an agreement designed to integrate cloud single sign-on (SSO) with Force10 top-of-rack (ToR) switches utilizing cloud access control software from Intel Corporation. As a part of Force 10′s Open Cloud Networking (OCN) framework they incorporate the Intel Expressway Access 360 software into their top-of-rack switching solutions. “Single sign on, account provisioning, and strong, second factor authentication are foundation cloud-enablement capabilities demanded by enterprises before fully embracing the cloud. As Force10 embeds Intel Expressway Cloud Access 360 into their cloud-bursting infrastructure, the market will benefit from a new level of enterprise-class security applied to cloud bursting scenarios where applications and access are enabled on-demand,” said Girish Juneja, director, application security and identity products at Intel. “We expect the combined solution will help move the Enterprise beyond tightly controlled private clouds to more scalable, open public cloud deployments.”

Intel powers TIanhe-1A

Intel announced that its Intel Xeon 5600 series processor is at the heart of the world’s most powerful supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A.  The supercomputer in Tianjin, China came in at 2.57 petaflops, powered by 14,396 Intel processors accompanied by NVIDIA GPU accelerator cards.  “Our Xeon processor roadmap continues to deliver hugely powerful supercomputers that are helping solve mankind’s greatest challenges,” said Rajeeb Hazra, general manager of Intel’s High Performance Computing organization. “Securing the t op position on the Top 500 is a source of great pride for Intel, and demonstrates the tremendous leaps in performance and versatility that our processors are delivering across a range of compelling workloads.”

During the SC10 conference Intel has been conducting demonstrations of its recently announced Intel MIC (Many Integrated Core) architecutre, as well as showcasing compressed medical imaging developed with May Clinic on “Knights Ferry,” the first Intel MIC design and development kits.

The Exascale Report interviews Justin Rattner, Intel Vice President and CTO on his perspectives for where the microprocessor industry is headed.

SGI introduces Jolt technology

At the SC10 Conference SGI announced the introduction of Jolt technology that will deliver vast improvements in speed, performance and scalability to their Altix UV.  Jolt technology allows the Altix UV to scale from 2,048 to over 250,000 cores, from 16TB to 8PB of memory and from 4 to 512 cabinets.  Stephen Hawking and Cambridge and the COSMOS Consortium selected the SGI Altix UV as their compute platform to unlock the mysteries of the origins of the universe.

“SGI’s customers are among the largest and most innovative HPC facilities in the world, and they are embracing Altix UV and the breakthrough performance of shared-memory supercomputing. New doors are opening to Altix UV in commercial computing markets, further expanding the definition of supercomputing and applications it serves,” said Tony Carrozza, senior vice president of worldwide sales at SGI.

SGI also announced Tuesday that it has received the HPCWire Editor’s Choice Award for the “Best HPC Server or Technology.”  “The HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards recognize companies that have made the most significant impact in the global HPC market,” said Thomas Tabor, publisher of HPCwire. “I would like to congratulate SGI for its expertise and innovation in the HPC community, and for its technical computing leadership. These awards are a clear indication of how our readers and editors, among the most informed in the industry, view SGI’s Altix UV.”

Platform Computing debuts LSF8

At the SC10 conference Platform Computing announced the availability of the latest version of its flagship product family, Platform LSF, a workload scheduling solution for high performance computing (HPC). Version 8 of the software includes the ability to delegate administrative rights to line of businesss managers, live dynamic cluster reconfiguration, guaranteed resources to ensure service level agreements are met, flexible fairshare scheduling policies, and unparalleled scalability to support the large clusters in use today. Platform LSF will be available in January 2011.

“With Platform LSF we can intelligently schedule workload, ensuring that we get the maximum return on our significant investment in simulation tools and hardware,” said Nathan Sykes, Head of CFD, Red Bull Racing.  “We partnered with Platform Computing to deploy a complete software management solution and, as a result, benefitted from a 20% improvement in the throughput of our engineering analysis.

Platform Computing also announced that it is making HPC in cloud environments a reality for HPC data centers through three flexible and powerful cloud bursting solutions. The first solution is an integrated cluster with the Cloud (Platofrm LSF) that pairs LSF’s dynamic host capabilities with a cloud service such as the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud.  The second solution is a multi-cluster to the Cloud (Platform LSF with Platform MultiCluster) and allows users to start up a new cluster in any cloud or hosting provider environment.  The third solution is a dynamic cluster extension to the cloud.

Juniper powers 100G demonstration

Juniper Networks announced the industry’s first demonstration of a standards-based 100G core-to-edge network, powered by the newly introduced Juniper Networks T4000 Core Router and the MX3D Series Universal Edge Router. “Internet2 is creating a high-capacity network that will enable advanced networking features for more than 200,000 essential community anchor institutions, and high-capacity bandwidth is a requirement for successfully building and running that network,” said Rob Vietzke, Internet2 executive director of network services. “With next-generation 100G platforms, we will support advanced research and education applications that are not possible today, but will impact our economy tomorrow.”

The T4000 will be available in the second half of 2011. The MX3D Series Universal Edge Routers are generally available today with 100Gigabit Ethernet interfaces available in 2011.

Force 10 demonstrates 40 Gigabit Ethernet

Force 10 Networks is at the SC10 conference and will exhibit 10/40 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) solutions. Arpit Joshipura, chief marketing officer at Force 10 explained that “by demonstrating line-rate 40 GbE solutions in a collaborative environment, we anticipate that SC10 attendees will walk away clearly understanding that 40 GbE is market-ready to solve today’s performance needs while helping to curb growing data center complexity.” To show how 40 Gigabit Ethernet is already market-ready the Force 10 S-Series 4810 top-of-rack switch will be showcased as part of a comprehensive, multi-vendor multi-technology display in the Ethernet Alliance (EA) booth.

Extreme Networks 40 Gigabit Ethernet

Extreme Networks (EXTR) announced that it is working with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) at the SC10 conference Tuesday in evaluating high speed, standards-based 40 GbE connectivity in support of scientific research that studies the global climate. “Our High End Computer Networking (HECN) Team at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is looking forward to using Extreme Networks’ 40 GbE modules in our environment. We’ve been link aggregating multiple 10 GbEs for quite some time, and prefer to have 40 GbE, especially given Extreme Networks’ announced price,” said J. Patrick (Pat) Gary, project manager for GSFC’s HECN Team. “The demonstrations at SC/10, involving the transfer of very large files, can help propel climate research further.”

Intel invests billions in next-generation manufacturing. Intel (INTC) announced that the company will invest between $6 billion and $8 billion on future generations of manufacturing technology in its American facilities.  The investment will focus on manufacturing to support future technology advancements in Arizona and Oregon and bring 6,000 to 8,000 construction jobs and 800-1,000 permanent high-tech jobs.  “Intel makes approximately 10 billion transistors per second. Our factories produce the most advanced computer technology in the world and these investments will create capacity for innovation we haven’t yet imagined,” said Brian Krzanich, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Manufacturing and Supply Chain. “Intel and the world of technology lie at the heart of this future. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we can retain a vibrant manufacturing economy here in the United States by focusing on the industries of the future.”  The funding will drive the deployment of Intel’s next-generation 22-nanometer manufacturing process across several existing U.S. factories, along with construction of a new developmental fabrication plant in Oregon.

The Bunker extends ISO27001.  The Bunker Secure Hosting announced that its ISO/IEC 27001:2005 accreditation has been extended to cover its Newbury based data center. “The Bunker has always maintained a reputation for security,” said Simon Neal, COO at The Bunker. “When we achieved the ISO27001 accreditation at our Kent site, we also applied all the processes to our Newbury site right away. Extending the accreditation was the next logical step. We wanted to offer clients who require an ISO accredited data centre the choice of location and the possibility of dual site solutions.”

SGI selected by University of Queensland.  SGI announced that The University of Queensland has commissioned a high performance computing (HPC) solution consisting of SGI Rackable half-depth servers to support a broad range of research applications.  With 3,144 Intel Xeon 5500 and 7500 processor cores and 11.52TB of memory it is one of the largest HPC systems in Australia.  The system will be used for research applications such as bioinformatics, computational chemistry, finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics and earth sciences.  “These computers will strengthen an important part of the University’s research capacity. Tasks such as processing enormous amounts of biological data generated through techniques such as genome-sequencing, micro-arrays and imaging cannot be done on standard desktop computers,” said Professor Max Lu, deputy vice-chancellor (Research) at The University of Queensland.

Yahoo reports third quarter results.  Yahoo (YHOO) reported results for the third quarter, period ending September 30, 2010.  Revenue was up 2 percent to $1.6 million with net earnings per diluted share up 126 percent to $0.29 compared to the third quarter of 2009.  “We delivered a solid quarter with good display advertising revenue growth, big gains in operating income, and margins that were double what they were last year,” said Carol Bartz, president and CEO of Yahoo!. “Because we recognize the tremendous value of our assets, we also dramatically stepped up our stock repurchases. We’ve now bought back more than 7% of the company’s stock this year alone.” During the third quarter Yahoo began the migration to the Microsoft adCenter platform and opened their energy-efficient data center in New York.

PEER 1 selects Juniper. Juniper Networks (JNPR) announced that PEER 1 Hosting (PIX) has selected Juniper’s “3-2-1″ architecture for a comprehensive upgrade of its data centers and core network infrastructure that is designed to cost-effectively increase traffic capacity and scalability.  “Juniper’s solutions provided the unprecedented scalability, performance and reliability we needed for our network in order to meet our current and future requirements. As we continue to evolve our network and data centers to next-generation technologies, we see Juniper as a partner in this effort and more than just a vendor,” said Ted Smith, senior vice president of operations at PEER 1 Hosting. PEER 1 has deployed Juniper MX960 3D Universal Edge Routers, EX8200 Ethernet Switches and EX4200 Ethernet Switches with virtual chassis fabric technology.

Intel reports first $11B revenue quarter. Intel (INTC) reported that third quarter revenue exceeded $11 billion for the first time, up 18 percent year-over-year to $11.1 billion.  Operating income was reported at $4.1 billion and net income at $3.0 billion.  “These results were driven by solid demand from corporate customers, sales of our leadership products and continued growth in emerging markets. Looking forward, we continue to see healthy worldwide demand for computing products of all types and are particularly excited about our next-generation processor, codenamed Sandy Bridge, and the many new designs around our Intel® Atom™ processors in everything from the new Google TV* products to a wide array of tablets based on Windows*, Android* and MeeGo* operating systems,” said Intel president and CEO Paul Otellini.  Sony introduced their first Internet TV, powered by Google TV Tuesday.  The new TV is built on the Android platform and includes a powerful Intel Atom processor.

Nimsoft Deployed by SoftLayer. CA Technologies (CA) company Nimsoft announced that SoftLayer Technologies has launched the Nimsoft Monitoring Solution (NMS). This will give SoftLayer customers visibility to their infrastructure, services, customer views and customer service levels as well as full transparency through any application stack. All SoftLayer customers will receive the same standard-level monitoring, including automated alerts and reporting on critical health indicators. “We believe in empowering our customers, and that means not only giving them complete control over their services but also giving them all the information they need to make informed decisions about their infrastructure,” said Sam Fleitman, SoftLayer Chief Operations Officer. Australia-based L7, an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider has also deployed NMS to provide value-added monitoring of critical systems, including Vblock Infrastructure Packages.