What is InfiniBand technology?

InfiniBand is a channel-based fabric that facilitates high-speed communications between interconnected nodes. An InfiniBand network is typically made up of processor nodes, such as PCs, servers, storage appliances and peripheral devices. It also has network switches, routers, cables and connectors.

What is difference between Ethernet and InfiniBand?

InfiniBand also has much lower latency than Ethernet and, most importantly, it incorporates processing engines inside the network that accelerate data processing for deep learning and high-performance computing. These are key technology advantages for any compute- and data-intensive application.

Is InfiniBand faster than Ethernet?

Key difference between Ethernet and Infiniband, which makes Infiniband faster, is RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access).

What is InfiniBand device?

InfiniBand (IB) is a new I/O technology based on switched fabrics. It provides high bandwidth, low latency interconnect for attaching I/O devices to hosts and for host-to-host communication. IB devices are managed by the Solaris IB nexus driver.

What connector does InfiniBand use?

SDR InfiniBand uses the CX4 connector.

What's New with InfiniBand?

Does InfiniBand require a switch?

Yes, you can directly connect them.

What are InfiniBand cables?

InfiniBand (IB) is a computer networking communications standard used in high-performance computing that features very high throughput and very low latency. It is used for data interconnect both among and within computers.

Does InfiniBand use IP?

Internet protocol (IP) packets can be sent over an InfiniBand (IB) interface. This transport is accomplished by encapsulating IP packets of IB packets using a network interface.

What is InfiniBand architecture?

InfiniBand architecture is a new I/O specification that will start to ship in a wide variety of server and interconnect products during 2001. InfiniBand architecture is a well-described technology with a final speci- fication that was prepared by the InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) in the fall of 2000.

What is InfiniBand driver?

InfiniBand is a network architecture that is designed for the large-scale interconnection of computing and I/O nodes through a high-speed switched fabric. To operate InfiniBand on a Sun Blade 8000 Series Modular System, you need an InfiniBand HCA (the ExpressModule) and an InfiniBand software stack.

What are the benefits of InfiniBand?

Fabric consolidation and low energy usage: InfiniBand can consolidate networking, clustering, and storage data over a single fabric which significantly lowers the overall power, real estate and management overhead required for servers and storage.

Who makes InfiniBand?

The NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand family of fixed-configuration switch systems provides the highest-performing fabric solutions in a 1U form factor with up to 64 ports of 400Gb/s non-blocking bandwidth and extremely low port-to-port latency.

What is latency in Ethernet?

What Is Network Latency in Ethernet Switches? Network latency is a term used to indicate any kind of delay that happens in data communication over a network. An Ethernet switch latency, or network latency in an Ethernet switch, represents for a period that Ethernet packet spends traversing a network switch.

Does InfiniBand use TCP?

InfiniBand effectively addresses all of the stated limitations of TCP and can provide seamless connectivity to applications designed to work with TCP. Many counter that the industry will develop TOEs (TCP Offload Engines) that will overcome these limitations and lower both latency and CPU utilization.

What are InfiniBand verbs?

“Verbs” is the term used for both the seman- tic description of the interface in the InfiniBand Architecture Specifications, and the name used for the functions defined in the widely used OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) implementation of the software interface to InfiniBand.

What are the basic medium reach and data rate of InfiniBand?

The InfiniBand standard supports single data rate (SDR) signaling at a basic rate of 2.5 Gbits/sec per lane to allowa raw data rate of 10 Gbits/sec over 4X cables (the most common InfiniBand cable type used).

Is InfiniBand bidirectional?

Like Fibre Channel, PCI Express, Serial ATA, and many other modern interconnects, InfiniBand offers point-to-point bidirectional serial links intended for the connection of processors with high-speed peripherals such as disks.

What is latency in HPC?

For HPC ap- plications latency is the time it takes a zero-length packet to be transmitted from one process on one node, through the NIC, through the switch, to a NIC on a second node and to a process on the second node.

What is RDMA used for?

Overview. Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) is an extension of the Direct Memory Access (DMA) technology, which is the ability to access host memory directly without CPU intervention. RDMA allows for accessing memory data from one host to another.

What is InfiniBand RDMA?

RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) or InfiniBand over Ethernet (IBoE) is a network protocol that allows remote direct memory access (RDMA) over an Ethernet network. It does this by encapsulating an InfiniBand (IB) transport packet over Ethernet. There are two RoCE versions, RoCE v1 and RoCE v2.

How does fiber channel work?

Fibre Channel networks form a switched fabric because the switches in a network operate in unison as one big switch. Fibre Channel typically runs on optical fiber cables within and between data centers, but can also run on copper cabling.

How fast is Fiber channel?

Fibre channel supports a transmission speed of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 128 Gbps. While, the speed of optical transceiver used in Ethernet ranges from Fast Ethernet of up to 100 Mbps, Gigabit Ethernet of up to 1000Mbps, 10 Gigabit of up to 10 Gbps to even some 40 or 100 Gbps today.

How does InfiniBand switch work?

InfiniBand creates a private, protected channel directly between the nodes via InfiniBand switches, and facilitates data and message movement without CPU involvement with Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) and send/receive offloads that are managed and performed by InfiniBand adapters.

What is InfiniBand switch in Exadata?

Infiniband Network of Exadata

Infiniband switches provide interconnect between Database Server and Cell Server ( Storage Server ).