Projecting data speeds of 104Gb/s per 4x port in 2011

HAMBURG, June 2 -- The InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA), a global organization dedicated to maintaining and enhancing the InfiniBand specification, today announced an update to its InfiniBand roadmap, showing current and projected link speeds for the technology from 2010 through 2011 and beyond. The roadmap shows 4x EDR ports at 104Gb/s data rate in 2011 (26Gb/s per lane); the IBTA's previous roadmap, published in June 2008, had projected 4x EDR at less than 80Gb/s data rate in 2011. The IBTA also announced that, according to the June 2010 list published this week, InfiniBand is now deployed in 208 systems of the TOP500 supercomputer sites – an increase of 37 percent from one year ago.

The IBTA increased data speeds for 2011 due to the increased demand for higher throughput and to provide the base for next-generation, high-performance and data center interconnect solutions.

"The new projected speeds will provide end users with enhanced cost/performance benefits and robust network capabilities to support multi-core processors and accelerators," said Jim Pappas, marketing director at Intel Corporation and co-chair of the IBTA Steering Committee. "The roadmap reiterates the IBTA's commitment to continue and define InfiniBand as the performance leader in interconnects, while ensuring end user investment protection."

In addition to the roadmap, the IBTA unveiled a new naming convention for bandwidth that expands the previously-defined terms – DDR, QDR, EDR and HDR -- to include FDR and NDR. FDR (14Gb/s data rate per lane in 2011) was added for midrange enterprise data center solutions that are looking to optimize the cost and power/performance ratio for their communications networks.

The roadmap details 1x, 4x, 8x and 12x EDR and FDR, incorporating 64/66 encoding, with bandwidths reaching 300Gb/s data rate EDR in 2011. The newly defined link speeds are designed to keep the rate of performance increase in line with systems-level performance increases.

For vendors with a stake in the interconnect business, the InfiniBand roadmap provides a vendor-neutral outline for the progression of InfiniBand so that they may plan their product development accordingly. For enterprise and high-performance computing end users, the roadmap provides specific milestones around expected improvements to ensure their InfiniBand investment is protected. The updated roadmap is available on the IBTA Web site at www.infinibandta.org/technology.

InfiniBand-Connected Systems Grow to 208 of the TOP500; Increase 37 Percent from One Year Ago

The IBTA also announced today that InfiniBand is the only growing standard interconnect technology on the June 2010 TOP500 list of supercomputers. InfiniBand is connecting 208 systems of the TOP500, or 41.6 percent. This represents a 37 percent increase from the list published one year ago.

InfiniBand is the most prevalent interconnect in the TOP100, TOP200 and TOP300, connecting the most powerful clusters in the world:

• 64 percent of the Top100 (64 systems).
• 56.5 percent of the Top200 (113 systems).
• 47 percent of the Top300 (141 systems).

Additionally, the total number of InfiniBand-connected CPU cores on the TOP500 list has grown 73 percent, from 1.04 million in June 2009 to 1.8 million in June 2010. InfiniBand enables the highest system efficiency and utilization, up to 96 percent.

Published twice a year and publicly-available at www.Top500.org, the TOP500 list ranks the world's most powerful computer systems according to the Linpack benchmark rating system. The TOP500 list is a respected industry report that indicates usage trends in computing and interconnect solutions.

About the InfiniBand Trade Association

The InfiniBand Trade Association was founded in 1999 and is chartered with maintaining and furthering the InfiniBand specification. The IBTA is led by a distinguished steering committee that includes IBM, Intel, Mellanox, Oracle, QLogic, System Fabric Works and Voltaire. Other members of the IBTA represent leading enterprise IT vendors who are actively contributing to the advancement of the InfiniBand specification. The IBTA markets and promotes InfiniBand from an industry perspective through online, marketing and public relations engagements, and unites the industry through IBTA-sponsored technical events and resources. For more information on the IBTA, visit www.infinibandta.org.

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Source: InfiniBand Trade Association