InfiniBand and OFED Deployments Are on the Rise: Trade Associations

Nearly 42 percent of world’s powerful computers are using open-source software OEFD and InfiniBand, say OpenFabrics Alliance and trade associations.

InfiniBand and OFED connect many supercomputers in the world, including five of the top 10 and the majority of top 300 PCs, the Alliance told in a press release.

According to the release, InfiniBand and OFED-based system performance grew 44 percent from November 2010 to November 2011. This year marks the first appearance of FDR 56Gb/s InfiniBand on the TOP500 list, illustrating the realization of the InfiniBand Trade Association's roadmap.

Reports say worldwide adoption and deployment of OFED with all Linux distributions and Windows –– supporting both InfiniBand and Ethernet –– is increasing. OFED helps RDMA-based networks provide computing efficiencies as high as 96 percent and latencies as low as one microsecond, and supports speeds up to 56Gb/s for InfiniBand and 40Gb/s for Ethernet.

OFED also reduces data center power consumption up to 50 percent. OFED works with all current Linux distributions and Windows, network media technology independent, supports all commodity processor technologies as well as all common storage access methods. OFED is evolving towards applications that require extremes of performance, Exascale-level scalability and utility-class reliability.

"InfiniBand and OFED are experiencing growing adoption by vendors and users worldwide," said Brian Sparks (News - Alert), co-chair of the IBTA and OFA Marketing Working Group. "This year the IBTA and OFA have collaborated in our SC11 booth to demonstrate a 'world's first' in terms of 40Gb/s data transfer rates over a long distance.

This demo is expected to provide insight into the types of InfiniBand and OFED-enabled solutions you'll see moving forward, as well as how RDMA communication opens new possibilities for collaboration among researchers by enabling quick and efficient data sharing.