PLX Member of OpenFabrics Alliance

PLX Technology, Inc. announced its membership and participation in the OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA), an organization committed to enabling efficient computing with the highest network bandwidth and lowest end-to-end latencies for Linux distributions and Windows Server OSs.

OFA develops, tests, licenses, supports, and distributes the open source software package known as OpenFabrics Software (OFS) for performance networking applications that demand low latency and high scalability. It enables efficient computing through the support of RDMA that allows computers to read from and write to each other’s application memory directly, eliminating the need to copy the information to intermediate buffers, thus removing a large burden from system CPUs which reduces latency and increases network utilization.

The PLX vision is to extend OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) compatibility to native PCIe-based platforms, thus leveraging the installed base of RDMA-enabled software to run without bridging to intermediate protocols. Transport independence means that users can utilize the same OpenFabrics RDMA, kernel bypass the application programming interface (API), and run their applications agnostically over PCIe, IB, iWARP or RoCE.

“PLX is well aligned with the OpenFabrics Alliance and currently developing compliant PCIe-based solutions featuring RDMA and other functions to enable PCIe to act as a fabric within data center racks,” said Mani Subramaniyan, principal architect, system software, PLX. “The core goal is to develop products that greatly reduce energy costs while vastly increasing performance and our engagement with OFA is a step toward achieving that goal.”

“The OFA’s mission is to deliver a cross-platform, transport-independent software stack for RDMA,” said Jim Ryan, chairman, OFA. “PLX is a recognized supplier of PCIe switching with expertise in RDMA and we welcome their contributions to the development and promotion of the OpenFabrics Software.”

PLX owns over 70% market share in PCIe switch products, offering 18 ExpressLane PCIe Gen3 switches. The company has many more Gen3 switches in development to enable ExpressFabric, storage and other key data center applications, and in parallel is planning for PCIe Gen4 products.