Friday, August 29, 2008

Stealthy Grid-X grabs $800K in new funds

By Efrain Viscarolasaga

Mysterious grid-computing technology developer Grid-X landed an additional $800,000 in funding to continue the development of its 100-gigabit Ethernet offload engine for cluster computing. The funding brings the company’s total to more than $2 million.

According to company documents, Grid-X is developing a 100 Gbps offload engine for cluster computing applications, primarily used in scientific research. Company officials continued their radio silence about what they’re up to, but one executive explained, via e-mail, that Grid-X’s algorithms offer speeds of 100 Gbps in a single lane, or in 10 Gbps intervals over 10 lanes, when connecting grid-computing environments with regular TCP network environments. According to the source, the technology works with clusters and personal computers, but the company is focused on grid-computing applications.

Two investors who have been identified in the past are Boris Maznek, a former supercomputing engineer for Kendall Square Research in Cambridge before it went bankrupt in the late 1990s, and Bill Poires, a former senior vice president of supply at Global Petroleum Corp. in Waltham. Investors in the most recent funding were not announced, though Grid-X officials described the investments as coming from “government contracts, customer contributions and seed investments.”

The funding will take the company “to (delivered) units in the beta stage at two big firms,” according to an e-mail from Poires.

Grid-X has secured a number of beta test sites, including aerospace firms, government laboratories, and defense firms, but it has not named any organizations specifically. The company is also pursuing additional angel and venture capital funding, but no details were provided.

Grid-X has been working under a cloud of secrecy since 2007, though occasionally releasing brief updates. Mass High Tech unveiled some connections to a Bedford company making offload engines called SeaFire Micros Inc. last year, though those connections were never confirmed.