The Server System Infrastructure Forum Unveils SSI Blade Server Products From Leading Blade Component Vendors At IDF 2009

The Server System InfrastructureSM Forum (SSI), a leading server industry group that drives server infrastructure standards, recently announced a broad range of server blade products and components built and distributed from its member companies. SSI will unveil and demonstrate these new solutions and components designed according to the SSI specification to deliver high-efficient blade solutions at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) 2009 at San Francisco's Moscone Center, Sept. 22-24, booth #413.

In today's business environment, blade-based servers offer critical advantages to companies seeking to expand business services while containing or cutting their IT costs. Earlier this year, the Server System Infrastructure (SSI) Forum announced a new industry-wide initiative to standardize blade-based server components to enable growing opportunities for component vendors and system integrators, and to enable IT departments to quickly and easily benefit from blade-based server technologies. SSI member companies have been able to show a fast turn-around to deliver the SSI promise to users today.

SSI will feature blade server based demonstrations from member companies at IDF. By taking advantage of the industry-standard SSI ecosystem and SSI-compliant modules, companies can significantly reduce the resources and time required for product development, while offering their customers greater freedom of choice through industry standards and proven interoperability. The demos include:

• AMI, a leader in BIOS/UEFI, server management and storage product innovations, will demonstrate the interoperability of its MegaRAC server management solution based on SSI standards, and will discuss SSI interoperability from a management perspective.
• Dawning, Asia's #1 supercomputing vendor, will introduce the world's first blade computing system that fully complies with SSI standards.
• Mellanox Technologies, a leading vendor for server and storage interconnect solutions, will demonstrate its SSI-compliant blade mezzanine card for 40Gb/s InfiniBand.
• NextIO, a pioneer in next-generation I/O virtualization solutions, will demonstrate its SSI compliant PCIe blade interconnect module and will enable a single 10Gb Ethernet adapter to be shared across multiple SSI servers.

The SSI Forum will also showcase PDK's (Product Development Kits) from Intel as part of plans to open a 3rd party C&I Lab later this year. These test kits are now available to "Building Block" designers to use throughout the design cycle to help ensure compliance to the SSI Specifications. By doing so, designers will increase confidence of solid compliance results completed in minimal test runs at the 3rd party C&I lab – ultimately saving test dollars while bringing interoperability to the industry. Additionally, Jim Ryan, president of the SSI Forum, will lead a panel discussion on "Interoperability Delivered," featuring executives from Dawning, NextIO and AMI describing the benefits of achieving interoperability.

In addition to its focus on blade servers, the SSI Server Work Group is also working on a new, narrow board standard. This "1/2-wide" form factor, tentatively 165mm x 420mm, will support the popular configurations of two independent dual-socket nodes in a 1U chassis or four independent dual-socket nodes in a 2U chassis for greater compute density.

"The SSI Forum is driving the rapid adoption of blade servers while also continuing its work in conventional server standards, and I am pleased that we are rapidly delivering on the promise of solutions based on interoperable SSI platform standards at IDF," said Jim Ryan, president, the SSI Forum. "We are also pleased to announce that SSI Forum membership has grown more than 50 percent in the past year, and we expect to continue positive growth in the years to come."

About the SSI Forum
Established in 1998, the Server System Infrastructure (SSI) Forum is a leading server industry group that drives server infrastructure standards. Now with over 35 members worldwide, the SSI Forum creates standards for redundant server power systems, rack-mount server chassis, power control and management, and other components and services that simplify the build of server solutions. The SSI Forum recently extended its focus to include blade-based server standards that address customer and ecosystem challenges. SSI's goal is to enable future server market growth by standardizing interfaces between components, including boards, chassis, and power supplies, and by developing common server hardware elements. The SSI Forum held an SSI Workshop in August 2009 that spotlighted the ease and importance of interoperability for industry-leading OEMs. More information is available at www.ssiforum.org.

SOURCE: SSI Forum