Dolphin Interconnect Has Been Appointed as an Authorized Partner for MySQL

25 January 2005

THE OUTCOME OF A SUCCESSFUL PROGRAM TO EXTEND THE DOLPHIN SCI TECHNOLOGY TO CORPORATE DATABASE APPLICATIONS

Clinton, MA and Oslo, Norway — Dolphin Interconnect, the leading provider of high-speed interconnects based on the Scalable Coherent Interface (SCI), has been appointed an Authorized Partner for MySQL®, the highly popular open source database.

Dolphin SCI interconnect adapters enable users of MySQL Cluster to transparently achieve superior database performance on clusters from two to hundreds of nodes. “MySQL and SCI together create a powerful platform ideal for running large databases on cluster architectures,” said Keith Murphy, VP Sales for Dolphin. “The key to achieving overall superior performance is maximizing the efficiency of the underlying server cluster.” Dolphin has perfected the SCI interconnect technology with the innovative Dolphin Socket Software to deliver the fastest memory-to-memory data transfers that are critical to database performance.

As an Authorized Partner, Dolphin will work closely with MySQL to support their users requiring high-end performance. The Dolphin hardware is compatible with a wide range of server platforms providing a faster and lower latency interconnect solution. The Dolphin Sockets software supports all versions of MySQL Cluster and can be used without any special application setup or configuration.

“We see our alliance with MySQL as an important step in light of the expanding use of Linux in business and enterprise applications,” said Kare Lochsen, CEO of Dolphin Interconnect. “SUN Microsystems has been shipping Enterprise Servers with Dolphin cards since 1996. This alliance with MySQL will help fuel the continued expansion of scalable database clustering in the Linux and Open Source market,” Lochsen explained.

"Individual database records and queries are relatively small entities of data and for clusters to be efficient and scalable, these data items need to be moved between processors with the lowest possible latency and overhead. This is precisely why performance and scalability of MySQL Cluster improve significantly with Dolphin's interconnect", explained Mika Asikainen, Partner Manager of MySQL.

Researchers at MySQL have been working with Dolphin SCI technology for some time to document the performance and scalability improvements for MySQL Cluster. A series of tests to compare the performance of SCI Sockets and the SCI transporter, with both compared to the TCP/IP transporter, concluded that overall for most benchmarks SCI sockets improves performance around 100% compared to TCP/IP. “We now recommend Dolphin SCI on our web site as the solution for efficient scaling of MySQL Cluster" Mika Asikainen said.

About Dolphin Interconnect Solutions

Dolphin Interconnect Solutions of Clinton, Massachusetts (USA) and Oslo, Norway provides high-speed, high-bandwidth interconnect products based on the Scalable Coherent Interface (SCI). The Dolphin SCI adapter cards have the unique advantage of enabling a direct link from a processor to remote memory in a multiprocessor system. It can be used directly in all systems with a PCI (PMC or cPCI) bus or carrier and under a variety of operating systems and processors. The interconnect provides very low overhead communication and extremely low latencies and high throughput, especially for communication that requires the transfer of small data packets like databases. Dolphin products are also used in a wide variety of embedded applications and to build cost-effective, highly scalable, high-performance clustered computing systems. For additional information, please visit www.dolphinics.com.

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Note: Dolphin Interconnect Solutions is a trademark of Dolphin Interconnect Solutions AS in the United States and other countries. Other product names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies.