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InfiniCon Systems today announced the ISIS Starter Kit Program to provide its ISIS Shared I/O System – packaged with a complete host environment – to systems integrators, OEMs, and early adopters of InfiniBand-enabled networks. Scheduled for August 2002 shipment, the ISIS Starter Kit is expected to be the first commercially available shared I/O system based on InfiniBand architecture.
InfiniCon’s ISIS architecture is a multi-protocol connectivity system that uses InfiniBand as an enabling technology. It provides an external pool of I/O resources that Infiniband-capable servers can share to gain improved levels of connectivity and throughput to/from storage and LAN/WAN networks, as well native InfiniBand fabrics.
InfiniCon’s ISIS Starter Kit equips OEMS, software and hardware developers, and early adopters with a full function InfiniBand, Ethernet, and Fibre Channel I/O system that will make it simpler and more cost-effective to engineer and exercise InfiniBand-based offerings for the next generation of servers and peripherals. Each ISIS Starter Kit configuration provides access to a fully-integrated 4x InfiniBand switched fabric, multiple 1 Gigabit Ethernet and 2 Gigabit Fibre Channel ports, and a suite of advanced software features that enable port sharing, diagnostics, and other capabilities to facilitate product development and testing. In addition, Host Channel Adapters (HCAs) and associated host environment support are being provided to ensure a complete end-to-end solution for rapid deployment.
“The InfiniBand Architecture has entered the early adopter stage, requiring vendors to take a pro-active role in getting customers deployed,” stated Jamie Gruener, Senior Analyst with The Yankee Group, a Boston-based research firm that just released a report entitled, To InfiniBand and Beyond: A Market Overview. “The ISIS Starter Kit appears to provide a cost-effective platform for companies looking to exploit InfiniBand’s capabilities and shorten time to market for first-generation InfiniBand products.”
According to InfiniCon, without a starter kit such as the ISIS, developers and implementers of InfiniBand architecture solutions are required to piece together software and hardware offerings from multiple vendors in order to implement test environments that extend beyond basic switching or single protocol routing.
As part of its Starter Kit offering, InfiniCon will supply training modules, and enable customers to collaborate with its technical staff.
