InfiniBand Specs Fleshed Out
(06/23/00, 3:21 p.m. ET) By Mitch Wagner, InternetWeek
Intel and systems vendors met last week at a developers' conference to
hammer out specs for InfiniBand, a technology that could be used to link
the various types of networks in a data center and reduce the number of
nets IT managers have to juggle.
Infiniband would replace the PCI bus on PCs and servers and be used to
tie systems, storage devices, and WAN devices into a single network. IBM
last week outlined plans to develop hardware implementing InfiniBand,
which could be available in products from IBM and other vendors in the
second half of 2001.
Why the move to Infiniband? The PCI bus, the current standard for I/O
for PCs and other commodity systems, is running out of gas. Even the new
PCI-X standard is relatively slow, running at about 1 Gbyte/s, and
multiple devices added to a PCI-X bus must all share the same bandwidth.
By contrast, InfiniBand starts at 2.5 Gbyte/s in each direction. Later
generations could offer speeds of 10 to 30 Gbyte/s. Moreover, since
InfiniBand is a switched-fabric architecture, additional devices added
to the connection will bring additional bandwidth, said Jim Pappas,
director of initiative marketing for the enterprise platform group at
Intel, Santa Clara, Calif.
"InfiniBand is going to provide higher bandwidth and make it simpler to
interconnect different machines," said Linley Gwenapp, an analyst with
the Linley Group. "SCSI and buses like that are running out of
bandwidth, and InfiniBand is going to be faster and more scalable."
InfiniBand has the support of major systems vendors. In addition to
Intel, the steering committee developing the specifications includes
Compaq (stock: CPQ), Dell (stock: DELL), Hewlett-Packard (stock: HWP),
IBM, Microsoft (stock: MSFT), and Sun (stock: SUNW). The technology has
the backing of 160 companies, including systems vendors and networking
and peripherals vendors. The specifications are expected to be released
in September or October, Pappas said.
IBM said it plans to ship host channel adapters for servers, target
channel adapters for storage and networking devices, and eight-port
switches for InfiniBand late next year.
In the first phase of InfiniBand deployment, beginning when products
ship late next year, systems, storage, and networking hardware will
support both PCI and InfiniBand. But ultimately they'll all connect
through a single InfiniBand switch and share resources, Pappas said.
InfiniBand also will eventually replace Ethernet in the data center,
although Ethernet will continue to be used in buildings and to connect
buildings on a campus, said Mitch Shults, director of business
development at Intel.
The technology also will be able to tunnel storage over IP, using IPv6
-- something that would allow users to perform remote mirroring.
So there GG. The end of Ethernet in data centers from someone who should know.... |
