Infiniband software to boost servers
Infiniband software to boost servers
11 companies and two U.S. national laboratories have created a consortium which aims to integrate Infiniband interconnect into Linux, initially for use in high-end technical computing applications.
The Open Infiniband Alliance is planning to release this first standard of software drivers later this year, and will follow-up in about 18 months with software specifically for large commercial database clusters.
The group is made up of Dell, Engenio, Inc., IBM, Network Appliance and Sun Microsystems, Infinicon, Mellanox, Topspin and Voltaire.
OpenIB will work with the Infiniband Trade Association that looks over the development of the Infiniband spec, but does not have the ability to develop Infiniband software or application programming interfaces.
Initial InfiniBand Architecture implementations are expected to reside with server clusters. It will create an opportunity to be used to provide a unified data centre fabric as well as enabling I/O sharing.
It also aims to create a chance for server design innovation, including dense server blade implementations, and many tout it as having the ability to transform the industry.
Engenio plans to demonstrate the first generation of Infiniband Linux software in its arrays used in high performance computing clusters at the Supercomputing 2004 conference in Pittsburgh.
A more robust Linux implementation is expected to be rolled out 18 months later.At the moment, Engenio's RAID and storage array products use Fibre Channel interconnects, but are expected to move to Infiniband for big technical and commercial applications eventually.
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