ABSTRACT
InfiniBand is a powerful new
architecture designed to support I/O connectivity for the Internet
infrastructure.InfiniBand is supported by all the major OEM server vendors as a
means to expand beyond and create the next generation I/O interconnect standard
in servers. For the first time, a high volume, industry standard I/O
interconnect extends the role of traditional “in the box” busses. InfiniBand is
unique in providing both, an “in the box” backplane solution an external
interconnect and “Bandwidth Out of the box”, thus it provides connectivity in a
way previously reserved only for traditional networking interconnects. This
unification of I/O and system area networking requires a new architecture that
supports the needs of these two previously separate domains. Underlying this
major I/O transition is InfiniBand’s ability to support the Internet’s
requirement for RAS: reliability, availability, and serviceability. This white
paper discusses the features and capabilities which demonstrate InfiniBand’s
superior abilities to support RAS relative to the legacy PCI bus and other
proprietary switch fabric and I/O solutions. Further, it provides an overview
of how the InfiniBand architecture supports a comprehensive silicon, software,
and system solution. The comprehensive nature of the architecture is illustrated by providing
an overview of the major sections of the InfiniBand 1.0 specification. The
scope of the 1.0 specification ranges from industry standard electrical
interfaces and mechanical connectors to well defined software and management
interfaces.
Introduction
With
the deployment of the InfiniBand architecture the bandwidth limitation of PCI-X
becomes even more acute. The IBA has defined 4X links, which are deploying as
PCI HCAs (Host Bus Adapters) in the market today, and even though these HCAs
offer greater bandwidth that have ever been achieve in the past; PCI-X is a
bottleneck as the total aggregate bandwidth of a single InfiniBand 4X link is
20 Gb/s or 2.5 GB/s. This is where new “local” I/O technologies like Hyper
Transport and 3GIO will play a key complementary role to InfiniBand. The
popularity of the Internet and the demand for 24/7 uptime is driving system
performance and reliability requirements to levels that today’s PCI
interconnect architectures can no longer support. Data storage elements; web,
application and database servers; and enterprise computing is driving the need
for failsafe, always available systems, offering ever higher performance. The
trend in the industry is to move storage out of the server to isolated storage
networks and distribute data across fault tolerant storage systems. These demands
go beyond a simple requirement for more bandwidth, and PCI based systems have reached
the limits of shared bus architectures. With CPU frequencies passing the
gigahertz (GHz) threshold and network bandwidth exceeding one gigabit per
second (Gb/s), there is a need for a new I/O interconnect offering higher
bandwidth to support and scale with today’s devices. Introduce InfiniBand, a
switch-based serial I/O interconnect architecture operating at a base speed of
2.5 Gb/s or 10 Gb/s in each direction (per port). Unlike shared bus
architectures, InfiniBand is a low pin count serial architecture that can
connect devices on the PCB and enables “Bandwidth Out of the Box”, spanning
distances of up to 17m over ordinary twisted pair copper wires. Over common
fiber cable it can span distances of several kilometers or more. Furthermore,
InfiniBand provides both QoS (Quality of Service) and RAS (reliability,
availability, and serviceability). These RAS capabilities have been designed
into the InfiniBand architecture from the beginning and are critical to its
ability to serve as the common I/O infrastructure for the next generation of
compute server and storage systems at the heart of the Internet. As a result,
InfiniBand will radically alter the systems and interconnects of the Internet
infrastructure1.This paper discusses the features inherent to InfiniBand that
enable this transformation.
InfiniBand
is backed by top companies in the industry, including the steering committee
members: Compaq, Dell, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Sun. In
total, there are more than 220 members of the InfiniBand Trade Association. The
InfiniBand architecture offers all the benefits mentioned but to realize the
full performance bandwidth of the current 10Gb/s links the PCI limitation must
be removed and this is where currently developing interconnect technologies
will assist InfiniBand. This paper will illustrate how to realize the full
potential of InfiniBand, including full bandwidth, even up to the 12X link specification
(or 30 Gb/s in each direction), in a later section.
Application Clustering
The
Internet today has evolved into a global infrastructure supporting applications
such as streaming media, business to business solutions, E-commerce, and
interactive portal sites. Each of these applications must support an ever increasing
volume of data and demand for reliability. Service providers are in turn
experiencing tremendous pressure to support these applications. They must route
traffic efficiently through increasingly congested communication lines, while offering
the opportunity to charge for differing QoS and security levels. Application
Service Providers (ASP) has arisen to support the outsourcing of e-commerce,
e-marketing, and other e-business activities to companies specializing in
web-based applications. These ASPs must be able to offer highly reliable
services that offer the ability to dramatically scale in a short period of time
to accommodate the explosive growth of the Internet. The cluster has evolved as
the preferred mechanism to support these requirements.
A
cluster is simply a group of servers connected by load balancing switches
working in parallel to serve a particular application. InfiniBand simplifies
application cluster connections by unifying the network interconnect with a
feature-rich managed architecture. InfiniBand’s switched architecture provides
native cluster connectivity, thus supporting scalability and reliability inside
and “out of the box”. Devices can be added and multiple paths can be utilized
with the addition of switches to the fabric. High priority transactions between
devices can be processed ahead of the lower priority items through QoS
mechanisms built in to InfiniBand.
Inter-Processor Communication (IPC)
Inter-Processor
Communication allows multiple servers to work together on a single application.
A high bandwidth, low-latency reliable connection is required between servers
to ensure reliable processing. Scalability is critical as applications require
more processor bandwidth. The switched nature of InfiniBand provides connection
reliability for IPC systems by allowing multiple paths between systems.
Scalability is supported with fully hot swappable connections managed by a
single unit (Subnet Manager).With multicast support, single transactions can be
made to multiple destinations. This includes sending to all systems on the
subnet or to only a subset of these systems. The higher bandwidth connections
(4X, 12X) defined by InfiniBand provide backbone capabilities for IPC clusters
without the need of a secondary I/O interconnect.
Storage Area Networks
Storage
Area Networks are groups of complex storage systems connected together through
managed switches to allow very large amounts of data to be accessed from multiple
servers. Today, Storage Area
Networks are built using Fibre Channel
switches, hubs, and servers which are attached through Fibre Channel host bus
adapters (HBA). Storage Area Networks are used to provide reliable connections
to large databases of information that the Internet Data
Center
I/O Architectures - Fabric vs. Bus
The
shared bus architecture is the most common I/O interconnects today although
there are numerous drawbacks. Clusters and networks require systems with high
speed fault tolerant interconnects that cannot be properly supported with a bus
architecture. Thus all bus architectures require network interface modules to
enable scalable, network topologies. To keep pace with systems, I/O
architecture must provide a high speed connection with the ability to scale.
Table 1 provides a simple feature comparison between switched fabric
architecture and shared bus architecture.
Shared Bus Architecture
In
a bussed architecture, all communication shares the same bandwidth. The more
ports added to the bus, the less bandwidth available to each peripheral. They
also have severe electrical, mechanical, and power issues. On a parallel bus,
there are many pins necessary for each connection (64 bit PCI requires 90
pins), making layout of a board very tricky and consuming precious printed
circuit board (PCB) space. At high bus frequencies, the distance of each signal
is limited to short traces on the PCB board. In a slot-base system with
multiple card slots, termination is uncontrolled and can cause problems if not
designed properly.
There
is a load limit to a bus design that only allows a few devices per bus. Adding
a bridge device to provide another bus with a new load limit behind the bridge
overcomes this limitation. Although this allows for more devices to be
connected to the system, data still flows through the central bus when accessing
devices on other parts of the system. Latency and congestion increases with
each bridge added to the system. A bus must be designed to operate under fully
loaded conditions assuming the worst case number of devices allowed by the
specification, which fundamentally limits the bus frequency. One of the major
issues with a bus is that it can’t support “out of the box” system
interconnects. To get systems to talk together, a separate interconnect is
required, such as Ethernet (server-to-server communication) or Fibre Channel
(storage networking).
Switched Fabric Architecture
A
switched fabric is a point-to-point switch-based interconnect designed for
fault tolerance and scalability. A point-to-point switch fabric means that every
link has exactly one device connected at each end of the link. Thus the loading
and termination characteristics are well controlled and (unlike the bus
architecture), with only one device allowed, the worst case is the same as the
typical case and therefore I/O performance can be much greater with a fabric. The switched fabric
architecture provides scalability which can be accomplished by adding switches
to the fabric and connecting more endnodes. Unlike a shared bus
architecture, the aggregate bandwidth of a system increases as
additional switches are added to the network. Multiple paths between devices
keep the aggregate bandwidth high and provide fail-safe, redundant
connections.
Interconnects Complement InfiniBand
Several
of these new interconnects are actually key enablers for InfiniBand as they
provide access to new levels of processor bandwidth and allow InfiniBand to
extend this bandwidth outside the box. Technologies such as 3GIO, Hyper
Transport, and Rapid I/O are being developed and this will provide InfiniBand with
a point of attachment to system logic that can support the 20 Gb/s required by
4X InfiniBand links and even the 60 Gb/sec needed by12X InfiniBand links. These
technologies complement InfiniBand nicely.
Bandwidth Out of the Box
A
fundamental aspect of the InfiniBand Architecture is the concept of “Bandwidth Out of the Box”.
InfiniBand has the ability to take bandwidth, which has historically been
trapped inside the server, and extend this across the fabric. InfiniBand
enables 10Gb/s performance to be effectively utilized, by delivering the data
precisely where it is needed anywhere in the fabric. Historically bandwidth
goes down the farther from the CPU data travels. The following graphic
illustrates this phenomenon and the historical trends. Outside of the box means
bandwidth all the way to the edge of the data center, from the processor to
I/O, between servers for clustering or inter-processor communication (IPC), to
storage and to the edge of the data center. Current state of the art processors
have front side busses able to communicate with other processors and memory at
25 Gb/sec, but the PCI-X systems available today constrain the bandwidth available
“outside the box” to only 8 Gb/s. Actual bandwidth within the data center is
even further limited, with IPC bandwidth constrained to 1 or 2 Gb/s, Fibre
Channel or storage communication is at best 2 Gb/sec and communication between
systems, typically over Ethernet is limited to 1Gb/s. This illustrates that
from the processor to the edge of the data center an order of magnitude of
bandwidth is lost. As discussed, new interconnects, namely 3GIO, Hyper
Transport or Rapid I/O can be used to increase I/O bandwidth well past 30 or
even 60 Gb/s. As new processors and/or system chip sets incorporate these interconnects
the current PCI limitations are overcome. From there the bandwidth of
InfiniBand can be unleashed as the HCA will connect into these interconnects
and this allows clustering, communication and storage all to be connected at
native InfiniBand speeds. Today the 1X (2.5 Gb/s) and 4X (10 Gb/s) links are
being deployed and in 2003 the market will begin to see the deployment of 12X
or 30 Gb/s links.
The figure below illustrates how InfiniBand releases Bandwidth Out of the Box by
giving a historical look
at bandwidth in the data center. Circa 1998: Intel’s Pentium II
offered world class performance but the overall
design of the compute server architecture limited the processors bandwidth to
"inside the box.” The further data travels from the processor the lower
the bandwidth, until more than an order of magnitude of
bandwidth is lost at the edge 100 Mb/sec. circa 1999: The Pentium III improves
processor performance
but the equation stays the same. Bandwidth is lost over distance
as data centers still communicate
at only 100 Mb/sec at the edge. In 2000 & 2001 the Pentium 4
and all other data center sub systems improve bandwidth, but the equation still
remains the same: there is more than an order of magnitude loss of
bandwidth from the Processor to the edge of the data center. The InfiniBand
Architecture changes the
equation. The InfiniBand architecture provides 20Gb/s bandwidth
(aggregate baud rate) from the processor to
the edge of the data center including LAN/WAN and storage connection.
InfiniBand enables Bandwidth Out
of the Box allowing processor level bandwidth to move
all the way to the edge of the data center. And the InfiniBand Architecture
provides the headroom at 12X to scale to 60 Gb/s in 2003.
It
is important to note that InfiniBand delivers not only bandwidth, but also
delivers the data right where it is needed; through RDMA transfers from system
memory to system memory. InfiniBand implements reliable in-order transport
connections in hardware and thus data is delivered extremely efficiently, with low
latencies and without host CPU assistance. This is a huge benefit as compared
to Ethernet which has much longer latencies and consumes significant CPU cycles
to run the TCP stack.
InfiniBand Technical Overview
InfiniBand
is a switch-based point-to-point interconnects architecture developed for
today’s systems with the ability to scale for next generation system
requirements. It operates both on the PCB as a component to component
interconnects as well as an “out of the box” chassis-to-chassis interconnect.
Each individual link is based on a four-wire 2.5 Gb/s bidirectional connection.
The architecture defines a layered hardware protocol (Physical, Link, Network, Transport
Layers) as well as a software layer to manage initialization and the
communication between devices. Each link can support multiple transport
services for reliability and multiple prioritized virtual communication channels.
To manage the communication within a subnet, the architecture defines a
communication management scheme that is responsible for configuring and
maintaining each of the InfiniBand elements. Management schemes are defined for
error reporting, link failover, chassis management as well as other services to
ensure a solid connection fabric.
InfiniBand Layers
The
InfiniBand architecture is divided into multiple layers where each layer
operates independently of one another. As shown in Figure on page 11,
InfiniBand is broken into the following layers: Physical, Link, Network,
Transport, and Upper Layers.
Physical Layer
InfiniBand
is a comprehensive architecture that defines both electrical and mechanical
characteristics for the system. These include cables and receptacles for fiber
and copper media; backplane connectors; and hot swap characteristics. InfiniBand
defines three link speeds at the physical layer, 1X, 4X, 12X. Each individual
link is a four wire serial differential connection (two wires in each direction)
that provides a full duplex connection at 2.5
Gb/s. These links are illustrated in figure. InfiniBand
defines multiple connectors for “out of the box” communications. Both fiber and
copper cable connectors are defined as well as a backplane connector for
rack-mounted systems.
Link Layer
The
link layer (along with the transport layer) is the heart of the InfiniBand
Architecture. The link layer encompasses packet layout, point-to-point link
operations, and switching within a local subnet.
•
Packets
There
are two types of packets within the link layer, management and data packets.
Management packets are used for link configuration and maintenance. Device
information, such as Virtual Lane
•
Switching
Within
a subnet, packet forwarding and switching is handled at the link layer. All
devices within a subnet have a 16 bit Local ID (LID) assigned by the Subnet
Manager. All packets sent within a subnet use the LID for addressing. Link
Level switching forwards packets to the device specified by a Destination LID
within a Local Route Header (LRH) in the packet. The LRH is present in all
packets.
•
QoS
QoS
is supported by InfiniBand through Virtual Lanes (VL). These VLs are separate
logical communication links which share a single physical link. Each link can support
up to 15 standard VLs and one management lane (VL 15). VL15 is the highest
priority and VL0 is the lowest. Management packets use VL15 exclusively.
Each
device must support a minimum of VL0 and VL15 while other VLs are optional. As
a packet traverses the subnet, a Service Level (SL) is defined to ensure its
QoS level. Each link along a path can have a different VL, and the SL provides
each link a desired priority of communication. Each switch/router has a SL to
VL mapping table that is set by the subnet manager to keep the proper priority
with the number of VLs supported on each link. Therefore, the IBA can ensure
end-to-end QoS through switches, routers and over the long haul.
•
Credit Based Flow Control
Flow
control is used to manage data flow between two point-to-point links. Flow
control is handled on a per VL basis allowing separate virtual fabrics to
maintain communication utilizing the same physical media. Each receiving end of
a link supplies credits to the sending device on the link to specify the amount
of data that can be received without loss of data. Credit passing between each
device is managed by a dedicated link packet to update the number of data
packets the receiver can accept. Data is not transmitted unless the receiver
advertises credits indicating receive buffer space is available.
•
Data integrity
At
the link level there are two CRCs per packet, Variant CRC (VCRC) and Invariant
CRC (ICRC) that ensure data integrity. The 16 bit VCRC includes all fields in
the packet and is recalculated at each hop. The 32 bit ICRC covers only the
fields that do not change from hop to hop. The VCRC provides link level data
integrity between two hops and the ICRC provides end-to-end data integrity. In
a protocol like Ethernet which defines only a single CRC, an error can be
introduced within a device which then recalculates the CRC. The check at the
next hop would reveal a valid CRC even though the data has been corrupted.
InfiniBand includes the ICRC so that when a bit error is introduced, the error
will always be detected.
Network Layer
The
network layer handles routing of packets from one subnet to another (within a
subnet, the network layer is not required). Packets that are sent between
subnets contain a Global Route Header (GRH). The GRH contains the 128 bit IPv6
address for the source and destination of the packet. The packets are forwarded
between subnets through a router based on each device’s 64 bit globally unique
ID (GUID). The router modifies the LRH with the proper local address within
each subnet. Therefore the last router in the path replaces the LID in the LRH
with the LID of the destination port. Within the network layer InfiniBand
packets do not require the network layer information and header overhead when
used within a single subnet (which is a likely scenario for Infiniband system
area networks).
Transport Layer
The
transport layer is responsible for in-order packet delivery, partitioning,
channel multiplexing and transport services (reliable connection, reliable
datagram, unreliable connection, unreliable datagram, raw datagram). The
transport layer also handles transaction data segmentation when sending and
reassembly when receiving.
Based
on the Maximum Transfer Unit (MTU) of the path, the transport layer divides the
data into packets of the proper size. The receiver reassembles the packets
based on a Base Transport Header (BTH) that contains the destination queue pair
and packet sequence number. The receiver acknowledges the packets and the
sender receives the acknowledge and updates the completion queue with the
status of the operation. There is a significant improvement that the IBA offers
for the transport layer: all functions are implemented in hardware. InfiniBand
specifies multiple transport services for data reliability. Table describes
each of the supported services. For a given queue pair, one transport level is
used.
InfiniBand Elements
The
InfiniBand architecture defines multiple devices for system communication: a
channel adapter, switch, router, and a subnet manager. Within a subnet, there
must be at least one channel adapter for each end node and a subnet manager to
set up and maintain the link. All channel adapters and switches must contain a
Subnet Management Agent (SMA) required for handling communication with the
subnet manager.
Channel Adapters
A
channel adapter connects InfiniBand to other devices. There are two types of
channel adapters, a Host Channel Adapter (HCA) and a Target Channel Adapter
(TCA).
An
HCA provides an interface to a host device and supports all software Verbs
defined by InfiniBand. Verbs are an abstract representation which defines the
required interface between the client software and the functions of the HCA.
Verbs do not specify the application programming interface (API) for the
operating system, but define the operation for OS vendors to develop a usable
API. A TCA provides the connection to an I/O device from InfiniBand with a
subset of features necessary for each device’s specific operations.
Switch
Switches
are the fundamental component of an InfiniBand fabric. A switch contains more
than one InfiniBand port and forwards packets from one of its port to another
based on the LID contained within the layer two Local Route Header. Other than
management packets, a switch does not consume or generate packets. Like a
channel adapter, switches are required to implement a SMA to respond to Subnet Management
Packets. Switches can be configured to forward either unicast packets (to a
single location) or multicast packets (addressed to multiple devices).
Router
InfiniBand
routers forward packets from one subnet to another without consuming or
generating packets. Unlike a switch, a router reads the Global Route Header to
forward the packet based on its IPv6 network layer address. The router rebuilds
each packet with the proper LID on the next subnet.
Subnet Manager
The
subnet manager configures the local subnet and ensures its continued operation.
There must be at least one subnet manager present in the subnet to manage all
switch and router setups and for subnet reconfiguration when a link goes down
or a new link comes up. The subnet manager can be within any of the devices on
the subnet. The Subnet Manager communicates to devices on the subnet through
each dedicated SMA (required by each InfiniBand component). There can be
multiple subnet managers residing in a subnet as long as only one is active.
Non-active subnet managers (Standby Subnet Managers) keep copies of the active
subnet manager’s forwarding information and verify that the active subnet
manager is operational. If an active subnet manager goes down, a standby subnet
manager will take over responsibilities to ensure the fabric does not go down
with it.
Management Infrastructure
The
InfiniBand architecture defines two methods of system management for handling
all subnet bring up, maintenance, and general service functions associated with
the devices in the subnet. Each method has a dedicated queue pair (QP) that is
supported by all devices on the subnet to distinguish management traffic from
all other traffic.
Subnet Management
The
first method, subnet management, is handled by a Subnet Manager (SM). There
must be at least one SM within a subnet to handle configuration and
maintenance.These responsibilities include: LID assignment; SL to VL mapping;
Link bring up and teardown; and Link Failover. All subnet management uses QP0
and is handled exclusively on a high priority virtual lane (VL15) to ensure the
highest priority within the subnet. Subnet Management Packets (SMPs -
pronounced “sumps”) are the only packets allowed on QP0 and VL15. This VL uses
the Unreliable Datagram transport service and does not follow the same flow
control restriction as other VLs on the links. Subnet management information is
passed through the subnet ahead of all other traffic on a link. The subnet
manager simplifies the responsibilities of client software by taking all
configuration requirements and handling them in the background.
General Services
The
second method defined by InfiniBand is the General Services Interface (GSI).
The GSI handles functions such as chassis management, out-of-band I/O
operations, and other functions not associated with the subnet manager. These
functions do not have the same high priority needs as subnet management, therefore
the GSI management packets (GMPs - pronounced “gumps”) do not use the high
priority virtual lane, VL15. All GSI commands use QP1 and must follow the flow
control requirements of other data links.
InfiniBand Support for the Virtual Interface Architecture (VIA)
The
Virtual Interface Architecture is a distributed messaging technology that is
both hardware independent and compatible with current network interconnects.
The architecture provides an API that can be utilized to provide high-speed and
low-latency communications between peers in clustered applications. InfiniBand
was developed with the VIA architecture in mind. InfiniBand off loads traffic
control from the software client through the use of execution queues. These
queues, called work queues, are initiated by the client, and then left for
InfiniBand to manage. For each communication channel between devices, a Work
Queue Pair (WQP - send and receive queue) is assigned at each end. The client
places a transaction into the work queue (Work Queue Entry - WQE, pronounced
“wookie”), which is then processed by the channel adapter from the send queue
and sent out to the remote device. When the remote device responds, the channel
adapter returns status to the client through a completion queue or event. The
client can post multiple WQEs, and the channel adapter’s hardware will handle
each of the communication requests. The channel adapter then generates a
Completion Queue Entry (CQE) to provide status for each WQE in the proper
prioritized order. This allows the client to continue with other activities
while the transactions are being processed.
Realizing the Full Potential of Blade Computing
To
fully realize the TCO benefits of blade based server computing the blade
technology must deliver at a minimum the following core functions: scalability,
fault tolerance, hot swap, QoS, clustering, support for I/O connectivity (both
memory and message semantics), reliability, redundancy, active stand-bye for failover,
interconnect manageability, error detection and more. It’s fairly straight
forward to understand why the IT Manager would require these attributes in
every new server platform that is deployed. As outlined in this paper, all of
these attributes are delivered natively with within the InfiniBand Architecture
and they will truly unleash the full potential that blade computing promises.
In a upcoming white paper by Mellanox Technologies, we will explore the
attributes and TCO benefits of InfiniBand Server Blades, in detail.
InfiniBridge
It
is an effective for implementation of HCAs, TCAs, or stand alone switches with
very few external components. The device’s channel adapter side has a standard
64-bit-wide PCI interface operating at 66 MHz that enables operation a with
variety of standard I/O controllers, motherboards, and backplanes. The device´
InfiniBand side is an advanced switch architecture that is configurable as
eight 1x ports, two 4x ports, or a mix of each. Industry standard external
serial/desterilizers interface the switch port to InfiniBand supported media.
No external memory is required for switching or channel adapter funchions.The
embedded processor initializes the IC on reset and executes subnet management
agent functions in firm wire. A 12C EPROM holds boot configuration.
InfiniBridge
also effectively implements managed switch applications. The PCI or CPU
interface can connect external controllers running InfiniBand management
software.
Or an unmanaged switch design can eliminate
the processor connection for applications with low area and part
count.Apprpriate configuration of the ports can implement a 4x to four 1x
aggregation switches.
InfiniBridge
channel adapter has two blocks each having independent ports to the switched
fabric architecture. One block to DMA engine interface to PCI bus and the other
uses PCI target and master PCI interfaces. This enables PCI-to PCI bridging
over the InfiniBand fabric. Both blocks include hardware transport engines that
implement the InfiniBand features. The DMA interface can move data directly
between local memory and InfiniBand channels. This process uses execution
queues containing linked lists of descriptors that one of multiple DMA
execution engines will execute. Each descriptor can contain a multientry
scatter-gather list and each engine can use this list to gather data from
multiple local memories and combine it into a single message to send into an
InfiniBand channel. The DMA engine supports re-execution of descriptors whose
messages are corrupted in the InfiniBand fabric.
Conclusion
The
collective effort of industry leaders has successfully transitioned InfiniBand
from technology demonstrations to the first real product deployments. The IBTA
currently has over 220 members, the specification is mature (over a year since
the 1.0 release), multiple vendors have publicly shown working silicon and
systems, and interoperability between InfiniBand silicon vendors has been
demonstrated. The benefits of the InfiniBand architecture are clear and
include: support for RAS (Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability), a
fabric that works both in-the-box and enables Bandwidth
Out of the Box, and scalability well into the future. The
IBTA has a vision to improve and simplify the data center through InfiniBand
technology and the fabric it creates as an interconnect for servers,
communications and storage. Imagine a data center made of servers that are all
closely clustered together. These servers have only processors and memory that connect
to storage and communications via InfiniBand ports. This allows for much
greater processor performance via Virtual Interface clustering, greater processor
and memory density (as most of the peripheral devices have moved out of the
server racks), and much greater (InfiniBand) I/O bandwidth. Best of all, all
these improvements are based upon an architecture designed for RAS. Now imagine
all this wrapped around the flexibility of upgrading your existing servers,
though PCI (upgraded by 3GIO) and through InfiniBand Server Blades. The rapid
adoption of Infiniband continues and its being welcomed as more businesses and
consumers utilize the Internet more often and at higher bandwidths.
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