Case Study: Academia Sinica achieves petabyte-scale, high-performance HPC networking with Extreme Networks

Extreme Networks Technology Plays a Key Role in Academia Sinica’s Leading-Edge Research

Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s national academy, needed a high-performance network to support its ASG high‑performance computing (HPC) environment and participation in LHC data analysis. Facing massive Big Data demands—over 2,500 blade servers and multi‑petabyte storage—the institute required a robust, reliable 10G network (with plans to scale to 40G/100G) that could sustain continuous large‑volume transfers, so Academia Sinica turned to Extreme Networks for the upgrade.

Extreme Networks implemented a BlackDiamond 8900‑series fabric solution (an 8810 chassis fully loaded with 8900 module cards and 40G→4×10G splitters delivering 192×10G ports), managed by Extreme Networks’ Ridgeline software. The deployment has delivered steady 10–20G continuous throughput in testing, removed network bottlenecks, simplified the architecture, supported the large blade‑server environment and multi‑petabyte storage, and provides scalable 40G/100G growth and investment protection.

Academia Sinica

Wen-Shui Chen

Network Manager