SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwire - July 22, 2009) - BLADE Network Technologies, Inc. (BLADE), the trusted leader in data center networking, announced that it is teaming up with the Intel® Academic Community and IBM to change the way parallel computing is taught. Clubhouse Parallel Universe, an intensive three-day programming boot camp at Brooklyn Technical High School that takes place July 21 through 23, will challenge top programming students in New York City to "Think Parallel."

The boot camp will conclude with an exclusive demo by Bank of America's Jeffrey M. Birnbaum -- showcasing a highly parallel database application on technology provided by Intel, IBM and BLADE Network Technologies.

Parallel processing is the simultaneous execution of the same task (split up and specially adapted) on multiple processors in order to obtain faster results. The parallel nature can come from a single machine with multiple processors or multiple machines connected together to form a cluster. Intel, IBM and BLADE have teamed up to demonstrate the power of parallel processing through single computers with multiple processors, or cores, operated on a high-performance Ethernet network.

Parallel processing is used in a wide variety of applications, including space exploration, calculating business risk, molecular modeling, weather forecasting, galaxy modeling, oil and gas operations, evaluating financial derivatives, designing wireless networks and in games. Today's high-performance desktop computers are empowering a new generation to employ parallel processing to solve complex problems without the need for multi-million dollar supercomputers or having to divide tasks across PC clusters. The confluence of lower-cost, high-performance computers and networks is a paradigm change in parallel processing engineering that Intel, IBM and BLADE Network Technologies are hoping to bring to high schools around the country.

"Our ultimate goal of teaming up with the Intel Academic Community and IBM is to support the development of a course of study for high school computer science teachers that will expand the pipeline of future software developers who can 'Think Parallel' and develop the next generation of applications for High Performance Computing," said Dan Tuchler, Vice President of Strategy and Product Management, BLADE Network Technologies. "The development of multiprocessor PCs and high performance networking are factors in a computing paradigm shift that can revolutionize the way parallel programming is done. On this 40th anniversary of the moon landing, we're very excited to be part of this boot camp which can be a model for empowering the next-generation of scientists and engineers to take us to places we can't even imagine."

To launch Clubhouse Parallel Universe, the Intel Academic Community (www.intel.com/thinkparallel) built a collaborative team, with Jeffrey M. Birnbaum, Managing Director, Global Head of Platform Solutions at Bank of America and a BLADE advisor, and Randy Asher, Principal of the Brooklyn Technical High School (http://www.bths.edu/) and Vice President of the National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Math, Science & Technology (http://www.ncsssmst.org) to implement the clubhouse with top technical high school students in New York.

Each day, students will also be given a Parallel Programming Puzzle to ponder, and discuss a real-world software developer solution the following day. Instruction for the boot camp is being provided by Intel experts, using the latest software development tools, including Intel® Parallel Studio (http://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-parallel-studio-home/). The boot camp concludes with an exclusive demo by Birnbaum showcasing high-parallelized financial services software on a 32-core, System x3950 M2 server donated by IBM and running at BLADE's world-class data center networking lab in the Silicon Valley.

The curriculum is adapted from undergraduate and graduate materials created by the Intel Academic Community currently being implemented by professors at 1350 universities in 72 countries. This is the first time the curriculum has been adapted to the high school level. Based on the success of the boot camp pilot, the Intel Academic Community and Randy Asher will determine best practices for teaching high school students parallel programming, and the potential of expanding the curriculum to other technical high schools and magnet schools through National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Math, Science & Technology (http://www.ncsssmst.org).

For photos, videos, tweets, blog posts and information, see:

-- BLADE Twitter: @BLADENetwork (#thinkparallel)

-- BLADE Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/BLADE-Network-Technologies/107162475618

-- BLADE YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/bladenetwork

-- BLADE's CEO Blog: http://www.bladenetwork.net/CEO-Blog.html

-- Networking for High Performance Computing (HPC): http://www.bladenetwork.net/hpc

-- Intel Twitter: @intelsoftware, @intelevents and @intelswblog

-- Intel Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/intelsoftwarenetwork or http://bit.ly/ISNonFB

-- Intel in Education: http://intel.com/thinkparallel

-- Intel YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/intelswnetwork

-- Intel Software Network TV: http://www.intel.com/software/tv or http://bit.ly/isntv

-- Academic Videos: http://software.intel.com/en-us/videos/category/academic/1/1/

-- Intel Academic Community: http://intel.com/software/academic

-- Intel® Parallel Studio: http://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-parallel-studio-home/

About BLADE Network Technologies

BLADE Network Technologies is the leading provider of Gigabit and 10G Ethernet cloud ready networking solutions for servers and storage in dynamic data centers worldwide. In addition to its innovative OEM blade switches, virtualization, and management products, BLADE's "Virtual, Cooler, Easier" RackSwitch family enables "Rackonomics" -- an efficient approach for scaling out data center networks to drive down total cost of ownership at the rack-level. BLADE's customers include more than 300 of the Fortune 500 across 26 industry segments, for an installed base representing more than 250,000 network switches and nearly 6 million switch ports connecting over 1,200,000 systems. Visit: www.bladenetwork.net. Twitter: @BLADENetwork.

BLADE Network Technologies and the BLADE logo are trademarks of BLADE Network Technologies. All other names or marks are property of their respective owners.