COMMERCIAL NEWS
Las Vegas, NEV. — The InfiniBand Trade Association announced the release of version 1.0 of the InfiniBand Architecture Specification at its second Developers Conference with more than 600 in attendance.
The architecture provides greater reliability, availability and scalability for server I/O subsystems, improving the performance of the Internet data center. The specification was developed by the InfiniBand Trade Association, with more than 200 companies and is publicly available for purchase and download.
“This is the starting gun for a new level of server performance,” said Vernon Turner, VP Commercial Systems and Server, IDC. “We’re going to continue to see a large number of companies make production commitments in the next few months. For end users, InfiniBand Architecture provides robust server I/O performance and scalability that will enable a new level of capability for the Internet data center.”
All attendees at the InfiniBand Developers Conference received a copy of the specification on CD-ROM. Members have access to a limited number of specification copies at no charge. For non-members, the specification is available for purchase through the InfiniBand Trade Association Web site ( http://www.infinibandta.org ) via download for $19.95, on CD-ROM for $49.95 and in bound copy for $249.95.
“InfiniBand Architecture allows developers to unlock a new level of performance in Internet data centers using a switched fabric design rather than a bus,” said Tom Bradicich, co-chair of the InfiniBand Trade Association. “The specification represents a major milestone for the computing industry, reflecting the joint effort and agreement of more than 200 companies and paving the way for interoperable products.”
The InfiniBand Trade Association hosted its second Developers Conference, October 24 -26 in Las Vegas. The event featured technical reviews of the specification by the architects, as well as discussion of InfiniBand Architecture development issues. In addition, compliance and interoperability plans were addressed at the conference.
The InfiniBand Trade Association is comprised of eight special workgroups, each with its own charter and area of expertise. The workgroups include: Marketing, Technical, Applications, Compliance and Interoperability, ElectroMechanical, Link, Management, and Software. InfiniBand Trade Association
The Internet is creating an increased demand for server computer I/O subsystem performance, scalability, reliability and flexibility. A shift to a switched fabric- based I/O architecture will enable industry participants to meet this increased demand. The InfiniBand Trade Association developed a specification for a channel-based, switched fabric architecture that provides a scalable performance range of 500Mbyte/s to 6 Gbyte/s, meeting the needs from entry level to high-end enterprise systems. InfiniBand Trade Association represents the industry’s choice for developing I/O technologies that will keep pace with the demands of the Internet age.
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