Woven Systems Extends HPC Ethernet Fabric Product Line

By DE Editors

Woven Systems, Inc. (Santa Clara, CA) announced the introduction of the TRX 100, a 48-port Gigabit Ethernet edge switch, and the addition of fiber optic interfaces to its flagship EFX 1000 Ethernet Fabric Switch. Intended to satisfy the scalability needs of data centers and HPC clusters, the company says the combination of the EFX 1000 core and TRX 100 edge switches is the industry’s highest capacity Ethernet Fabric switching solution — which can sustain low latency,  non-blocking throughput at 10Gbps across 4000 edge ports.

The TRX 100 Gigabit Ethernet Edge Switch is a compact (1U),  high-performance, managed Ethernet solution designed for top-of-rack server and storage aggregation and virtualization in data centers. As an edge switch connected to the Woven EFX 1000 Ethernet Fabric Switch, the company says its “TRX 100 enables unprecedented scaling and performance for servers connected with gigabit Ethernet interfaces, significantly reducing the cost of interconnects throughout the data center.”

The TRX 100 includes 48 standard 10/100/1000BASE-TRX auto-sensing ports, and offers two options for the four 10Gbps Ethernet uplinks: powered CX4 for active copper and optical CX4 cables, or SFP+ for fiber optic cabling. The inclusion of four 10Gbps uplinks minimizes oversubscription, and enables the TRX 100 to deliver peak I/O performance from today’s quad-core processors.

With redundant AC and DC power inputs and a mean time between failures (MTBF) in excess of 20 years, the TRX 100 also satisfies the energy conservation needs of fast-growing data centers with its low total power consumption of only 3 watts per port for the 48 GigE and four 10 GE ports.

The new 12-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet XFP interface card,  which will be available in Q1 2008, adds flexibility and range to the EFX 1000 Ethernet Fabric Switch product line. A single switch can support any mix of twisted-pair copper (CX4) and fiber optic interfaces required to connect TRX 100 or other switches. The XFP and SFP+ Small Form Factor Pluggable transceivers are optically compatible.

The EFX 1000 Ethernet Fabric Switch is a modular 10U switching platform that supports up to 144 non-blocking 10Gbps Ethernet ports. The Ethernet Fabric, created on single or multiple EFX 1000 switches, uses multiple active paths to create resilient, mesh topologies. More than 4000 non-blocking edge ports can be configured in a single Layer 2 Ethernet Fabric. Plus, Woven’s Active Congestion Management feature automatically redirects traffic to available, uncongested paths to deliver the highest throughput.

Pricing for the 48-port TRX 100 Ethernet Switch begins at $7950.

For further details, go to Woven Systems.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.