Imagine for a moment that firms on Wall Street can execute trades and trading algorithms much faster, where trading even milliseconds faster can mean millions in profits; or that the military can put high-density analytics systems like facial recognition in command aircrafts to speed intelligence, decision support and response efforts; or that today’s leading Internet service providers and search engines can dramatically accelerate services while cutting power and cooling costs in half and minimizing server footprints in over-crowded data centers. [ READ FULL ARTICLE ]

by George Lawton

A company has delivered the first version of a product that uses light signals, instead of cables and switches, to connect blade-server nodes. Lightfleet has sold and installed its Beacon prototype, a 32-node server, to Microsoft Research. Beacon uses the company’s Direct Broadcast Optical Interconnect (DBOI).
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Lightfleet Corporation announced today that they’ve placed an alpha version of their optical interconnect technology at Microsoft Research…
…The unit was delivered to Microsoft Research’s eXtreme Computing Group, the team that Dan Reed heads up. A little more in the announcement, and I have an email in to the company to find out details…
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Microsoft Research is the first commercial customer of a new optical equipment module made by a seven-year-old startup that hopes its gear will enable servers to send and receive information faster. Lightfleet, based in Camas, Wash. sold an alpha version of its Direct Broadcast Optical Interconnect system, which uses broadcast light to connect computing nodes, to Microsoft’s eXtreme Computing Group, as part of a project to explore faster communication between servers in its cloud computing deployments…
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Contact:
Kali Bean
Edelman
(503)471-6834
kali.bean@edelman.com

CAMAS, Wash. – April 20, 2010 – Lightfleet Corporation today announced that it has sold and installed its first commercial alpha unit at Microsoft Research. Lightfleet’s Direct Broadcast Optical Interconnect (DBOI) system uses broadcast light to reinvent the way computing nodes are connected in next generation data centers. Lightfleet’s DBOI technology creates a switchless optical fabric that enables all nodes to communicate with all other nodes simultaneously, breaking the performance barriers of today’s typical interconnect architectures. Engineered to meet the growing demands for green computing in an energy-efficient, high density form factor, Lightfleet’s capabilities offer unique parallel computing opportunities that allow for building efficient, high-performance cloud infrastructures that deliver more scalability, power savings and cost savings than ever before.

Delivery of the blade-based system, which uses Lightfleet’s optical interconnect technology and is ported to Windows, represents Lightfleet’s first customer shipment and a critical milestone in the company’s goal to solve distributed computing’s architectural bottleneck. Microsoft Research’s eXtreme Computing Group is exploring the potential of Lightfleet’s optical interconnect in cloud computing workloads. The group’s mission is to develop radical new approaches to computing hardware, and reliable, secure exascale software systems.

Lightfleet’s systems use broadcast light to break the inherent limitations of switched fabrics. The performance combines high throughput, low latency and the node-to-node data arrival skew typical of a shared memory system. This is achieved by utilizing the company’s patented DBOI technology and a shadowed-memory programming model which uniquely combines the benefits of large scale shared memory computing with the benefits of a standard, high volume distributed architecture.

John Peers, Lightfleet CEO, said, “The installation of this system at Microsoft Research is a key step to realizing the full potential of our technology. Lightfleet’s DBOI technology fundamentally changes the way communication among computing systems is achieved and we look forward to working with Microsoft to develop next-generation server and data center architectures that are highly scalable and offer new opportunities for massively parallel, distributed computing.”

As data center complexity increases and energy costs grow, input/output optimization and server consolidation are inevitable. The Lightfleet DBOI is designed to serve evolving cloud computing and virtualization demands. The company has received significant interest from the federal government and from Wall Street retail brokerage and investment management firms, market data firms and exchanges that realize the benefits of the technology ranging from high performance to general purpose computing. More information and a technical white paper are available at www.lightfleet.com.

About Lightfleet Corp.

Lightfleet was founded in 2003 by a team of individuals seeking to deliver simplified solutions in the increasingly complex world of computing. Drawing from diverse backgrounds in optics, signal processing, neural computing, massively parallel processing, and semiconductor design, Lightfleet is uniquely positioned to design faster, cooler, and more compact platforms than have previously existed. By leveraging the properties of light, Lightfleet brings enhanced value to our customers and partners in the form of efficient, flexible, and affordable systems to meet a range of compute needs including transaction processing, data mining, visualization, simulation, and high-throughput, large-scale application processing. Lightfleet’s headquarters are located in Camas, Washington. More information is available at http://www.lightfleet.com. OEMs should contact sales@lightfleet.com, Media should contact media@lightfleet.com.
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A start-up has plans to turn the traditional approach to blade servers on its ear, and it’s not just smoke and mirrors. But it is light and mirrors.

For the past seven years, Lightfleet has been working on a technology that employs light signals to replace the cabling and switches typically used to connect various server nodes in a blade server. And as of December, it had delivered its first unit–to Microsoft’s Research’s labs.

Lightfleet’s first product is code-named Beacon, a 32-node server that uses dual-core Intel processors along with standard off-the-shelf disks, memory, and storage all in a package that stands about 16 inches tall on a server rack (9U in server speak)… [ READ FULL ARTICLE ]

Lightfleet’s broadcast optical patents are a dramatic improvement over point-to-point. Lightfleet’s broadcast optical technologies are simpler to implement and can scale from a complex system level all the way down to the single integrated circuit component level. Broadcast optical is a much better method of communication since parallel computing communication latencies aren’t cumulative as they are in optical point-to-point. The spread nature of broadcast light-based communication also doesn’t require the ultra-precise manufacturing tolerances of point-to-point.

Lightfleet uses broadcast optics instead of point-to-point for computer interconnects. Lightfleet is the computing industry’s only broadcast optical technology vendor and our core technology is equivalent to a infinite lane, “optical superhighway” that is poised to supercharge the computing industry.

Data-intensive, high-throughput, and transaction-intensive applications all require fast, seamless flow of multiple data streams. These kinds of applications have been hampered by data congestion created in standard interconnects or switches that cannot switch fast enough.

So Lightfleet eliminated the switch.

With its Direct Broadcast Optical Interconnect (DBOI), Lightfleet is at the forefront of the next breakthrough in multiprocessor computing: speeding data flow by using light to connect processors. The DBOI interconnect is the first to use broadcast light to create a true non-blocking architecture.

Now, multiple processors connected to a DBOI interconnect can broadcast data to all of the others, and data arrives at each processor at the same time, at the same high speed, with the same low latency. No more delays. No more congestion.

As a result, computing with the DBOI interconnect gives you All-to-All™ connectivity that lets you shave milliseconds from transactions, get better answers faster, rapidly respond to changing conditions, and slice through peaks in the daily ebb and flow of data.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Hightower was managing director and Los Angeles office manager with Russell Reynolds Associates, Inc.; vice president of corporate planning and a corporate officer of Mattel, Inc.; vice president and general manager with General Electric Co. in Mexico; senior associate and engagement manager at McKinsey & Co., Inc; and a manager at Xerox Corporation.

Prior to entering the private sector, Mr. Hightower served in the U.S. Army for eight years, where he rose to the rank of major and was awarded decorations for meritorious achievement and valor. Mr. Hightower holds an M.B.A. degree from Harvard Business School and a B.S. degree from Howard University. He received the Alumni Achievement Award in Business from Howard University in 1986, the Alumni Achievement Award from Harvard Business School in 1992, and the U.S. Department of Commerce Pioneer Award in 1996. In addition to serving on Lightfleet’s board of directors, Mr. Hightower is also a member of the board of Accenture, Domino’s Inc., and a member of the board of trustees of Casey Family Programs.