InfiniBand

The infiniBand is a drunk of Ordinateur to high-flow. It is intended as well for the internal communications as external. It is the fruit of the fusion of two concurrent technologies, Future I/O , developed by Compaq, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard, with Next Generation I/O (ngio) , developed by Intel, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems. During a short time before the adoption of its final name, it was also named System I/O . Intel since reinvested itself in an almost alternative technology, the bus PCI Express, expressing its doubts about the future of the infiniBand.

The infiniBand uses a bidirectional bus with low costs, and profiting from a weak latency. But it remains in spite of extremely fast, since it provides a flow of 10 Gbit/s in each direction. The infiniBand uses a technology making it possible several peripherals to reach at the same time the network. The data are transmitted in the shape of packages, which gathered form messages .

The infiniBand today is very much used in the world of the HPC (High Performance Computing) in the form of charts PCI-X or NCV-Express train functioning into 10 Gbit/s (SDR, Single Dated Spleen), or 20 Gbit/s (GDR, Double Dated Spleen). This specialized network also required the use of a switch InfiniBand as well as cables coppers of the types CX4 or Fiber for the long distances (by using an adapter CX4 towards Fiber).

The protocol InfiniBand makes it possible to use these charts in a native way by using protocol VERBS or with software surcouches:

  • IPoIB (IP on InfiniBand) which presents an Ethernet layer to the top of the infiniband and thus the possibility of configuring a network IP on the InfiniBand ports.

  • SDP (Sockets Direct Protocol) which presents a socket layer to the top of the infiniband.
  • SRP (SCSI RDMA Protocol) which makes it possible to encapsulate screens SCSI through the infiniband. Certain manufacturers propose rather bays of storage connected in InfiniBand than in Fiber Chanel.

These surcouches offers performances lower than the native protocol, but is easier to use because they do not require redeveloppement applications to use the InfiniBand network. In the world of the HPC bookstores MPI (Passing Message Interfaces) in general use layer native VERBS directly to offer the best performances possible.

Today each manufacturer of InfiniBand material proposes his own layer of pilot and protocol. But it is possible to use the standard layer OpenIB (presents basic in the core linux recent and certain distributions linux), which is compatible with all the InfiniBand charts.

External bonds

  • an introduction to architecture infiniBand
  • the official site of the '' InfiniBand Trade Association ''
  • the project concerning the establishment into Linux
  • OpenFabrics Alliance
  • Wiki OpenIB, access to the OpenIB developments, plus access to library MPI (mpich) for Infiniband - > MVAPICH

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