IBTA Blog

The latest IBTA Plugfest took place last week at UNH-IOL in Durham, NH. This event provided an opportunity for participants to measure their products for compliance with the InfiniBand architecture specification as well as interoperability with other InfiniBand products. We were happy to welcome 21 vendors and we tested 22 devices, 235 DDR rated cables,  227 QDR rated cables and 66 FDR rated cables at the April 2011 event.

New for this latest Plugfest, we added beta testing for QSFP+ FDR Cables which support 54 Gb/sec data rate. I’m happy to report that we received a total of 66 cables supporting FDR rates and 5 of these were Active Fiber cables. Their performance bodes well for the new data rate supported in the IBTA Roadmap.

Vendor devices and cables successfully passing all required Integrators’ List (IL) Compliance Tests will be listed on the IBTA Integrators’ List and will be granted the IBTA Integrators’ List Logo. We will also have comprehensive interoperability results available documenting the results of heterogeneous device testing using all of the cables submitted at the Plugfest. We’re expecting to have the IBTA Integrators’ List updated in time for ISC’11.

I can’t believe I’m about to talk about our 20th event, but IBTA Plugfest 20 will be taking place this October. Stay tuned for exact dates. Thank you and congratulations to all of the vendors who participated in our April event and performed so well.

Rupert Dance

Co-chair, IBTA’s Compliance and Interoperability Working Group

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The IBTA Integrators’ List for Plugfest 18 is now available online: www.infinibandta.org/integratorslist. The number of products on the Integrators’ List has steadily increased and now includes 21 devices, 209 DDR cables and 174 QDR cables. We had 19 vendors attend the October 2010 event.

IBTA Plugfests provide an opportunity for InfiniBand device and cable vendors to test their products for compliance with the InfiniBand architecture specification, as well as interoperability with other InfiniBand products. Successfully passing the compliance requirements permits a product to be placed on the Integrators’ List. Both the cables and devices were put through exhaustive Interoperability testing using the Open MPI test suite.

The IBTA Plugfest events and the resulting Integrators’ List helps the IBTA identify and address problems with the specification, helps vendors identify areas for potential product updates, and aims to improve the overall end user experience with InfiniBand-related products. All of this paves the way for the IBTA and its members to confidently move forward to higher speeds, greater bandwidth and lower latencies in new products.

Coming soon: Plugfest 19, April 4-8, 2011

Please note that dates for IBTA Plugfest 19 have been set: April 4-8, 2011 at UNH-IOL. Plugfest 19 will include the first alpha testing of FDR cables and devices which are designed to run at 14 Gb/s per lane. We are also working to define a complete test suite to validate the specifications for both FDR and EDR data rates (see the IBTA Roadmap for more details). Visit the Plugfest web pages for more information and to register.

Congratulations to all of the Plugfest 18 participants!

Rupert Dance

rsdance@soft-forge.com

Co-chair, IBTA’s Compliance and Interoperability Working Group

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Dear IBTA Members,

As we wind down 2009 and look forward to spending time with family and friends, I thought it would be nice to have a blog posting to review all we have accomplished this year. From an InfiniBand perspective, 2009 was a good year.

We saw continued success on the TOP500, with the November 2009 list showing significant InfiniBand growth compared to the November 2008 list. Clearly InfiniBand is well on its way to becoming the number one interconnect on the TOP500. This is encouraging because it demonstrates user validation of the benefits of using InfiniBand.

Cable suppliers helped drive IBTA membership this year, as well as participation at the IBTA-sponsored Plugfest events held in April and October 2009. Also on the hardware side, we saw the introduction of numerous new switching platforms and new chips, both on the HCA and switch side. These types of investments further validate that multiple suppliers see InfiniBand as a growing, healthy marketplace.

In addition to all of the new hardware available, many software advancements were introduced. These included everything from wizards to simplify cluster installations to new accelerators to drive-enhanced application performance – not to mention APIs to allow users to better integrate interconnect hardware with applications and schedulers.

As noted in an earlier blog, we had a very successful showing at SC09 with several hundred people visiting the booth and a number of well-attended presentations. To view presentations from the show, please visit the IBTA Resources Web pages.

During November, the IBTA conducted a survey of SC09 attendees. Highlights include:

• 67.5% of survey respondents are using both InfiniBand and Ethernet in their current deployments
• 62.5% of survey respondents are planning on using InfiniBand in their next server cluster, while only 20% are planning on using 10GE, 12.5% Ethernet and 5% proprietary solutions
• The vast majority of respondents (85%) have between 1-36 storage nodes on average for their current clusters
• 95% are using Linux for their operating system
• 60% are using OFED as the software stack with the OS for interconnect, network and storage
• When it comes to applications, the most important factors are: latency (35%), performance (35%), bandwidth (12.5%), cost (12.5%) and messaging rate (5%)
• Over 67% indicated that they had considered IB as the interconnect for their storage

These results are encouraging, as they show that there is growing interest in InfiniBand, not only as the interconnect for the cluster compute nodes, but also for the storage side of the cluster.

Please be sure to check out the IBTA online press room for highlights from press and analyst coverage in 2009.

The Marketing Working Group would like to thank everyone for all of their efforts and continued support. We wish everyone a happy and healthy new year and look forward to working with you in 2010.

Kevin Judd

IBTA Marketing Working Group Co-Chair

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Greetings IBTA members and the larger InfiniBand community,

As you may have read in our recent press release, the IBTA is pleased to announce dates for the 16th Compliance and Interoperability Plugfest: October 12-16, 2009 in the University of New Hampshire’s Interoperability Lab.

I personally have been involved in this event for the past 8 years and have seen the Plugfests grow tremendously. Products that successfully pass Plugfest testing gain inclusion in the IBTA Integrators’ List. We currently have 297 products on our Integrators’ List and are expecting more than 200 cables and devices to be tested at the October event.

With the introduction of the IBTA Integrators List Logo Program last fall, cable vendors and device manufacturers now have the right to attach IBTA-certified logos to products that are active on the Integrators List. We’ve heard positive feedback from end users excited that they can now easily recognize InfiniBand-compliant products. This is especially useful for end users deploying and maintaining clusters since the cables will now be labeled with the speeds that they support.

This Plugfest will also include many new QDR products from InfiniBand vendors along with testing for the new CXP Interconnect which provides InfiniBand connectivity in a 120 Gb/s in a 12x Small Form-factor Pluggable Interconnect.

If you are interested in joining us at this year’s Plugfest, please visit our Plugfest section of the website, listed under Events or feel free to contact me at plugfest@lampreynetworks.com.

Regards,

Rupert Dance

CIWG – Program Director

Lamprey Networks

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Recently, the InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) released results from three analyst reports, demonstrating the continued market growth of InfiniBand products in the HPC and data center server and storage markets.

HPC Market Growth

For those following InfiniBand, the March 2009 Tabor Research report, “InfiniBand: Increases in Speed, Usage, Competition,” noting that “60 percent of surveyed HPC systems installed since the start of 2007 use InfiniBand as a system interconnect,” should come as no surprise. What is most promising is that “among those systems, over 30 percent also use InfiniBand for a LAN or storage interconnect.” In my view, that serves as a leading indication that customers are leveraging InfiniBand’s capabilities as the “unified wire”.

The report goes on to highlight increased demand for InfiniBand among customers consolidating their I/O fabrics. “HPC-using organizations that are considering converged fabric strategies are more likely to consolidate on InfiniBand than Ethernet.”

Read more…

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