Abstract: A disk-drive chassis of the invention has stiffening and damping members for reducing the transmission of vibrations between disk-drive units of a disk-drive array. The stiffening members include vertical dividers that are mechanically coupled between top and middle panels of the chassis. The stiffening members also include a corrugated stiffener attached to a bottom surface of the middle panel. The stiffener's corrugations are aligned parallel with a spindle axis of the respective disk-drive units. The damping member includes a constrained-layer damping plate which is attached to a top surface of the top panel by a visco-elastic damping adhesive. The chassis allows improved performance by the individual disk-drive units.

Abstract: An interconnection network comprises a pair of backplanes for receiving X pluggable node cards. The pair of backplanes include X backplane connector groups, each backplane connector group adapted to receive mating connectors from a pluggable node card. Each backplane connector group includes X/2 connectors. A first backplane includes first permanent wiring which interconnects a first subset of pairs of connectors between backplane connector groups. A second backplane includes second permanent wiring which interconnects a second subset of pairs of connectors between backplane connector groups. The first permanent wiring and second permanent wiring connect complementary subsets' of pairs of the connectors. A plurality of node cards, each including a card connector group, pluggably mate with the backplane connector groups. Each node card further includes a frontal connector that is adapted to receive a cable interconnection.