Roadrunner, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-funded supercomputer, uses EMCORE (News - Alert) Connects Cables (ECC) for InfiniBand interconnects.

 

The DOE supercomputer, reportedly the fastest in the world, was designed by IBM (News - Alert). It broke the petaflop barrier of 1,000 trillion operations per second. Funding for development of the computer comes from the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration. This High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster will be housed at the agency’s Los Alamos National Laboratory.

 

EMCORE Corporation is a provider of compound semiconductor-based components and subsystems for the broadband, fiber optic, satellite and terrestrial solar power markets. The company’s fiber optics segment offers optical components, subsystems and systems that facilitate the transmission of video, voice and data over high-capacity fiber optic cables for high-speed data and telecommunications, cable television (CATV) and fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) networks.

 

EMCORE Connects Cables are high-performance InfiniBand interconnects best suited for HPC and data-center environments. InfiniBand is a technology that employs a serial switched architecture. These connect cables allow to build larger clusters with up to 20 Gbps data rates, design computing clusters and facilities based on compute and storage needs, enable better facility airflow, potentially lowering cooling costs and reduce equipment installation and maintenance costs.

 

The Connect Cables operate at high-speed 20 Gb/s data rates with and extremely low Bit Error rate of 10(-15).

 

Stephen Krasulick, Vice President and General Manager of EMCORE's Digital Products division said, "Two years of diligent work between the EMCORE Connects Cables team and IBM have made the era of petaflop computing a reality."

 

Krasulick added, "EMCORE is proud to play a part in this computing milestone and to have our optical fiber EMCORE Connects Cables be the InfiniBand interconnect on the world's fastest supercomputer."