AB291A Fabric Clustering System Support Guide (12-port Switch), April 2004

Chapter 1
Introduction to Technology
Understanding InfiniBand
12
Understanding InfiniBand
This section provides a brief and high-level overview of the InfiniBand architecture.
What is InfiniBand?
InfiniBand is supported by HP as a fabric for high-performance technical computing clusters.
InfiniBand is a point-to-point, switched I/O fabric architecture. It was created to meet the increasing
demands of the data center, and allows data centers to harness server computing power by delivering an I/O
fabric that provides reliable low latency communication both from one server to another server, and between
server and their shared I/O resources.
InfiniBand technology refers to both a communications and management infrastructure that increases the
communication speed between CPUs, devices within servers, and subsystems located throughout a network.
It defines a switched communications fabric that allows many devices to concurrently communicate with
high-bandwidth and low latency in a protected, easily managed environment.
InfiniBand Advantages
Infiniband addresses four problems:
• Application to application latency.
• Application CPU consumption.
• Network bandwidth.
• Fabric Management.
InfiniBand Capabilities
InfiniBand is a standard-based interconnect that enables:
• High-bandwidth, 10 Gbps connectivity
• Extremely low-latency Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA)
InfiniBand Transport Services
The InfiniBand transport-service types include:
• Reliable Connection
• Unreliable Connection
• Reliable Datagram
• Unreliable Datagram
HP only supports Reliable Connected and Unreliable Datagram transports in its fabric product.