High Performance Computing (HPC) is an environment that pushes the limits of compute infrastructures. CPU compute power is, in the final analysis, the gating factor in system performance. With new and faster devices like Intel's Nehalem processors, the potential for increased performance is there, but resources (data storage and I/O) must be provided to the CPU in order to fully utilize this performance. When this 'provisioning' isn't optimized, bottlenecks can occur, slowing down the compute process. I/O Virtualization is a technology that optimizes network, storage and server I/O. It provides functionality that can address some of the typical issues faced in the HPC environment.
