“Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), today announced it has
signed a definitive agreement to acquire and license the
InfiniBand-related assets of Dolphin Interconnect Solutions, Inc. a
leading developer of high performance computer interconnects. The
closing of the transaction is subject to the usual and customary
closing conditions, including Dolphin’s shareholder approval.
The proposed acquisition of these assets will strengthen Sun’s
technology portfolio — Dolphin’s development efforts should
lead to increased scalability of the InfiniBand architecture,
enabling higher performance and lower cost interconnects.
Subject to the closing, this I/O technology, which not only enables
efficient communication between computers and network attached
devices, but also increases the numbers of systems that can be
connected, will be applied to Sun’s server and storage
systems.”
“InfiniBand is an interconnect or I/O architecture that connects
servers with remote storage and networking devices and other
servers. It can also be used inside servers for inter-processor
communication. It is a channel-based switched fabric point-to-point
interconnect, which provides functionality, scalability and
performance for a wide range of platforms and price performance
points. A steering committee comprised of Compaq, Dell, HP, IBM,
Intel, Microsoft and Sun oversees the development of the
specification. For more information see www.sysio.org.”
“Dolphin Interconnect Solutions, Inc. products and technologies
enable customers to build highly scaleable, enterprise-class
clustering solutions with standards-based hardware and software.
… It develops and manufactures high speed and low latency
networking cards, programming support tools, and services for
clustering Windows NT, UNIX, Linux and NetWare servers.”