Server expert IBM and networking specialist Cisco have jointly announced the opening of a High-Performance Computing (HPC) Center, as an extension of IBM's already existing Montpellier HPC Center.

The new facility will be used by the companies' customers and business partners for testing or benchmarking analytic software, engineering, aerospace design and other resource-demanding applications. Inside the partnership, IBM has come with the world's fastest cluster computers, while Cisco took care of the networking connectivity with their high-performance InfiniBand and Ethernet networking technology.

"We're pleased to expand our Montpellier Center with new HPC technologies from Intel and Cisco," said Dave Jursik, VP of sales for IBM Deep Computing. "This new capability will leverage the HPC resources and expertise in Montpellier and help IBM bring the benefits of high-performance computing to departmental and mid-scale users. Customers and partners, for example, will be able to size, test and benchmark critical applications such as Fluent."

When it comes to supercomputing clusters, IBM is the undisputed industry leader, The November 2007 top places the company number one in the TOP500 Supercomputer Sites List, thanks to their 186 clusters. IBM's clusters are based on Intel processors and include the System Cluster 1350 that integrates System x and BladeCenter servers with the latest and most efficient systems management and applications software.

"As the need for high-performance computing applications continues to grow, customers need to test drive these applications on a real-world IT infrastructure that uses the market leading HPC technologies," added Phil Andrews, director of DataCentre Technologies for Cisco Europe. "Together with IBM and Intel, we are providing a center where our customers can come and experience their applications at the speed of high performance computing and determine the technologies they need create the same experience in their own environment."

On the other side, Cisco is world's number one provider of corporate and industrial networking solutions and equipment. The company designed and implemented the AT&T coast-to-coast IP/MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) network, able to deliver speeds of up to 40Gbps. The Cisco SFS7000 and SFS3000 Infiniband technology minimizes the network latency and are especially used for financial trading systems.

The High Performance Computing Center will be powered by a mix of 45nm and 65nm based Quad-Core Intel Xeon CPUs on 32 IBM BladeCenter servers that will be interlinked through Cisco's Infiniband technology.