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Xyratex and University of Valencia Present Breakthrough Paper at HPCA Research Partnership Describes Solution to a 20-Year Network Congestion Problem HAVANT, United Kingdom, March 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Xyratex Ltd. (NASDAQ:XRTX) a leading provider of modular enterprise class data storage subsystems and storage process technology, has collaborated with the Universities of Valencia and Castilla-La Mancha, Spain, to develop a solution to a 20-year-old problem facing the IT industry, namely scalable congestion management across lossless multistage interconnection networks. The problem and its solution were outlined at the recent International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA) when Professor Jose Duato (Technical University of Valencia) and Ian Johnson (Xyratex, UK) presented a paper entitled "A New Scalable and Cost-Effective Congestion Management Strategy for Lossless Multistage Interconnection Networks 1." Problem -- scalable congestion management across lossless multistage interconnection networks Congestion occurs when too much traffic is trying to access one of the ports through the switch at any time. A simple example would be if every port of a switch tried to route data at full line rate to just one output port thereby creating a traffic jam or congestion. Under these circumstances data can be lost or network performance degraded. To manage these effects all individual high performance switches have complex internal scheduling algorithms. These algorithms are designed to enable the switch to cope with peak traffic flows and involve the detailed management and allocation of the internal switching core to the external input and output ports of the switch. For larger networks, multiple switches have to use and create Multistage Interconnect Networks (MINs). These networks have to cope with the peaks and flows of the network traffic between the individual switches causing another order of congestion management complexity. The uncoordinated interaction of the individual switches internal scheduling algorithms causes complex aggregation scenarios to arise which may result in the blocking that reduces performance. This seemingly intractable problem has now been resolved by Regional Explicit Congestion Notification (RECN). The main benefit of this new development is to enable large scale networks to be built from smaller switch components and still have acceptable or more acceptable blocking characteristics. Solution -- Regional Explicit Congestion Notification The solution is referred to as Regional Explicit Congestion Notification (RECN) because it detects and explicitly notifies congestion throughout the region that will be affected by a given congestion tree. For lossless networks, congestion has dramatic consequences as traffic is usually 'bursty,' increasing link utilization, which during certain time intervals will inevitably lead towards network saturation. The congestion trees that form can spread rapidly and cause systems to grind to a complete standstill. Performance degradation, due to interference between different traffic flows starts with simple Head-of-line (HOL) blocking and aggregation effects leads to congestion tree information. The de facto solution to this problem of lossless networks has traditionally been to over dimension the interconnection network, while for lossy networks it is simply discarded. Using RECN we can reduce overall network costs because it is now safe to operate the network closer to its saturation point. This enables us to use all of the bandwidth in the links thereby requiring fewer links and switches, which in turn leads to a reduction in power consumption. Joint Venture -- Xyratex and the Universities of Valencia and Castilla-La Mancha, Spain Professor Duato commented, "This paper proposes the first truly scalable solution to a long standing and difficult problem, which was first documented over two decades ago by Greg Pfister 2. This means that it is now feasible to significantly lower costs by reducing the number of network components, while preventing performance degradation when under conditions of heavy load." "Instead of trying to eliminate congestion RECN avoids performance degradation beyond the network saturation point by eliminating the negative effects of HOL blocking produced by congestion trees," said Ian Johnson, Chief Scientist of Xyratex. "This is achieved in a scalable manner by using separate queues for congestion flows. These can be dynamically allocated only when congestion arises and released when congestion subsides." The relationship between the University of Valencia and Xyratex is a good example of industry and university research skills working in partnership to address a global problem. Xyratex has a key strategy to develop such partnerships and has a number of active research projects in progress at any one time. 1 A New Scalable and Cost-Effective Congestion Management Strategy for Lossless Multistage Interconnection Networks -- J. Duato, I. Johnson, J. Flich, F. Naven, P. Garcia, and T. Nachiondo, Feb 2005 2 Hot Spot Contention and Combining Multistage Interconnect Networks -- IEEE Trans. On Computers -- G. Pfister and A. Norton, Oct 1985. About Xyratex Xyratex is a leading provider of enterprise data storage subsystems and network technology. The company designs and manufactures enabling technology that provides OEM and disk drive manufacturer customers with data storage products to support high-performance storage and data communication networks. Xyratex has over 20 years of experience in research and development relating to disk drives, storage systems and high-speed communication protocols. Founded in 1994 in an MBO from IBM, and with headquarters in the UK, Xyratex has an established global base with R&D and operational facilities in Europe, the United States and South East Asia. Contacts: Xyratex Investor Relations Brad Driver Tel: +1 (408) 325-7260 Email: Website: http://www.xyratex.com/ Xyratex Public Relations Curtis Chan CHAN & ASSOCIATES, INC. Tel: +1 (714) 447-4993 Email: DATASOURCE: Xyratex Ltd. CONTACT: Investor Relations, Brad Driver of Xyratex, +1-408-325-7260, ; or Public Relations, Curtis Chan of CHAN & ASSOCIATES, INC., +1-714-447-4993, , for Xyratex Web site: http://www.xyratex.com/

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