ScaleMP

ScaleMP, established in 2003 by Shai Fultheim and Herb Zlotogorski, operates in the high-performance computing (HPC) market, providing virtualization software that aggregates multiple commodity x86 servers into a single, virtual high-end system. Fultheim, who served as CEO, brought over 20 years of technology and business experience, including roles as CTO at BRM Capital and co-founding several startups. His background in leading large IT projects for the Israeli Defense Force's intelligence unit provided him with significant experience in scalable computing and large-scale IT infrastructure. The company's headquarters were in Fort Lee, New Jersey, with research and development facilities in Rosh Ha'ayin, Israel.

The firm's core business revolves around licensing its proprietary vSMP (Versatile Symmetric Multiprocessing) architecture. This software-only solution allows clients to create powerful, shared-memory systems without the need for expensive, custom hardware. By doing so, ScaleMP aims to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) for organizations requiring substantial computing power. The business model targets clients in commercial, government, and academic sectors who run data-intensive applications for analytics, databases, and simulations. Revenue is generated primarily from licensing its vSMP Foundation software, with pricing structured per socket. The company formed partnerships with major hardware manufacturers like Dell, Lenovo, HPE, and Intel to sell its integrated solutions.

ScaleMP's flagship product, vSMP Foundation, enables the aggregation of up to 128 separate x86 systems, creating a single virtual symmetric multiprocessing machine with capabilities of up to 32,768 cores and 2 petabytes of shared memory. This allows applications to access a massive, unified memory pool, simplifying management compared to traditional cluster environments. A key product variation, MemoryONE, uses high-performance NVMe SSDs to transparently expand a system's main memory, offering a cost-effective alternative to DRAM for memory-hungry applications like SAP HANA and Redis. The company was acquired by SAP in June 2021.

Keywords: high-performance computing, server virtualization, software-defined server, shared memory systems, virtual symmetric multiprocessing, vSMP, data center infrastructure, cluster aggregation, memory expansion, in-memory computing, total cost of ownership reduction, enterprise IT solutions, large-scale computing, software-defined memory, HPC virtualization, data analytics infrastructure, simulation computing, virtual SMP, server consolidation, NVMe memory expansion