IBTA Implements Optimized Testing and Debugging Procedures at Plugfest 31

BEAVERTON, Ore., July 11, 2017 — The InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA), a global organization dedicated to maintaining and furthering the InfiniBand specification, today announced the availability of its April 2017 InfiniBand Combined Cable and Device Integrators’ List and RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) Interoperability List. Held in April of 2017, Plugfest 31 featured significant updates to IBTA’s testing processes and methodologies, resulting in real-time interactive testing, debugging and validation of new InfiniBand and RoCE products. Additionally, Plugfest 31 saw an increase in vendors submitting RoCE capable solutions for interoperability testing as well as in InfiniBand EDR 100 Gb/s products being tested for both compliance and interoperability.

Updates to IBTA Plugfest testing procedures include:

New hardware and software solutions enabling real-time Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) testing
- 32 port VNA to test all eight lanes versus 4 port testing of one lane
- New MATLAB code to allow real-time processing of the 32 port s-parameter files
Active Time Domain (ATD) testing
- Eye Mask and Jitter testing
- Bit Error Rate (BER) testing
HDR 200 Gb/s testing capabilities
- Available in October 2017 at Plugfest 32

“IBTA members are quite excited about the enhancements to our compliance and interoperability testing methodology, which were first initiated at the Plugfest 31,” said Rupert Dance, Chair of the IBTA Compliance and Interoperability Working Group (CIWG). “The new procedures enable increased onsite participation and validation, allowing attending engineers to perform real-time debugging and interactive troubleshooting of their latest InfiniBand and RoCE solutions. This supplements the IBTA’s long-held reputation as having the preeminent and most rigorous compliance and interoperability program in the industry.”

IBTA Plugfest results will now be more rapidly available given the dramatic reduction of post processing time, better supporting those developers making critical system deployment decisions.

The InfiniBand Integrators’ List is comprised of a variety of InfiniBand solutions, including Host Channel Adapters (HCAs), Switches, iSCSI extensions for RDMA (iSER) targets, and both active optical and passive copper cables. The RoCE Interoperability List features 10, 25, 40, 50 and 100 Gb Ethernet RNICs and Switches. It also includes both active optical and passive copper Ethernet cables using SFP28 and QSFP28 connectors along with Hybrid cables, which allow you to connect 100 Gb Ethernet QSFP28 switch ports to four 25 Gb Ethernet RNICs using SFP28 connectors. The increase in InfiniBand EDR 100 Gb/s and RoCE products submitted for testing highlights continued industry demand for faster networking solutions accelerated by RDMA technology.

Updated twice a year following bi-annual Plugfests, the lists make up the IBTA Integrators’ Program, which is designed to support data center managers, CIOs and other IT decision makers with their planned InfiniBand and RoCE deployment in enterprise and high performance computing systems. The program is founded on intensive testing procedures that establish compliance to the IBTA architecture specifications and real-world interoperability among solutions.

Vendors that contributed test equipment to IBTA Plugfest 31 include Ace Unitech, Anritsu, Keysight Technologies, Molex LLC, Software Forge, Tektronix and Wilder Technologies. IBTA member companies with solutions featured on the lists include Amphenol FCI, Applied Optoelectronics, Cavium, Finisar, Fujitsu Component Limited, Intel Corp., Jess-Link Products Co., Ltd., Luxshare-ICT, Mellanox Technologies, Molex LLC, NetApp, TE Connectivity and Volex.

The following sources provide additional information about the IBTA Integrators’ List Program:

About the InfiniBand Trade Association

The InfiniBand Trade Association was founded in 1999 and is chartered with maintaining and furthering the InfiniBand and the RoCE specifications. The IBTA is led by a distinguished steering committee that includes Broadcom, Cray, HPE, IBM, Intel, Mellanox Technologies, Microsoft, Oracle and QLogic. Other members of the IBTA represent leading enterprise IT vendors who are actively contributing to the advancement of the InfiniBand and RoCE specifications. The IBTA markets and promotes InfiniBand and RoCE 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.

Source: InfiniBand Trade Association