Intel, Mellanox Offer InfiniBand Preview

ENT, March 26, 2001 by Christopher Mcconnell

Intel's upcoming InfiniBand I/O architecture promises to replace the omnipresent PCI bus as a high-speed, switched architecture. Intel and startup Mellanox Technologies are both offering developers and users a sneak peak into the future with prototype InfiniBand-capable PCI cards.

The driving force behind this taste-test is that Intel hopes to get users ready for full-scale InfiniBand implementations as soon as possible. "We are on track to see InfiniBand-related products by the end of 2001," says Phil Brace, director of product marketing for Intel's InfiniBand initiative.

Native InfiniBand implementations are still some time off, but Intel hopes offering cards to connect devices using the new InfiniBand connectivity protocol will lay the foundation for the InfiniBand era.

The InfiniBand protocol will offer 2.5 Mbps connectivity in the initial implementations. It also has native Virtual Interface (VI) support for performing network processing off-CPU.

Future InfiniBand implementations will offer native sup port in the chipset, eliminating the PCI bus I/O architecture. The samples shipped preview only the initial InfiniBand connectivity standard. "You'll see both native and card-based approaches," Brace says.

Vernon Turner, analyst at IDC, believes InfiniBand has the potential to shape the entire server landscape. "One of the constricting factors of the server world is the PCI bus," he says.

InfiniBand promises to im prove the performance of net works by eliminating I/O bottlenecks in the PCI bus. Instead of a bus, InfiniBand will use a switched architecture. The switched architecture enables a machine to handle more I/O requests than the traditional bus, enabling user to get the most from their net work infrastructure.

"You can flood the channel and not have the limitations of the PCI bus," Turner says.

Until native InfiniBand servers are available, Brace says users will be interested in a migration path from PCI-based servers to native InfiniBand machines. The card-based implementations offer such a migration path.

Three different InfiniBand device samples were released. The Host Channel Adapter connects servers to an InfiniBand fabric via a PCI card. The fabric is controlled using an InfiniBand switch. A Target Channel adapter offers connectivity from InfiniBand to Ethernet, SCSI, and other protocols.

Intel also said it shipped samples to switch vendors Qlogic and Crossroads Systems and SCSI vendors Adaptec and LSI Logic for development work. OEMs Compaq Computer and IBM also received test units.

Despite its promise, InfiniBand may have to fight an uphill battle as a connectivity standard, at least until native InfiniBand implementations arrive. Yes, its 2.5-GBps bandwidth rivals top Ethernet and Fibre Channel speeds, but with no installed base it lacks momentum in the market.

Brace, however, is optimistic that the strategy of moving I/O outside the network will capture the market's imagination. "We're really trying to ensure theecosystem is there," he says.

Startup-chipmaker Mellanox Technologies is offering its own InfiniBand prototypes to developers and vendors.

Mellanox has prototypes of its Host Channel Adapters for connecting servers to an InfiniBand network. The adapter consists of a device that slides into a PCI slot and enables connections of up to 2.5 Mbps. Kevin Dierling, vice president of marketing at Mellanox, says the company designed the device to give vendors and partners a sense of how InfiniBand operates.

Intel designed InfiniBand to replace traditional Ethernet and Fibre Channel connections in networks for faster device-to-device communication. It moves some hardware tasks such as SCSI commands and IP stacks out to the edge of the network, enabling greater network and server performance. Dierling says InfiniBand also provides improved quality of service features over IP networks and Fibre Channel.

Dierling expects to see InfiniBand used first as an internal architecture within servers, then as a connectivity standard for clustering and other server-to-server communications. Storage will follow, he says, beginning with network-attached storage implementations then in SANs.

Intel's Brace expects to see InfiniBand devices deployed in either server clustering or storage networking configurations. "You can have a scale-out story, but also a high-reliability connection to your backend devices as well," Brace says.

Turner expects Intel, Mellanox, and others to have real-world deployments of InfiniBand by the second half of this year. He believes that because InfiniBand is a new technology, it will be used initially for connecting small, dense servers, rather than high-end database machines. Regardless, Turner is optimistic about the future. "This is going to be huge," he says. "It's going to bring mainframe connectivity to the Intel architecture."