17% Growth for InfiniBand

The InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) announced that IB grew 17% Y/Y, connecting 197 systems on the June 2022 Top500 supercomputing list.

The interface also connects 62 of the Top100, making it the most used high-speed interconnect of the world’s top HPCs.

IB’s prominent presence on the Top500 is indicative of its ability to provide the speed, low latency and scalability that the top systems require. Leveraging RDMA fabrics such as IB and RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) also offers data centers reliability, efficiency, and an interoperable environment for these systems to expand.

“IB’s increased growth on the Top500 and leadership on the Top100 is due to IBs efficiency, scalability and fastest networking speeds that meet the industry’s demand for enhanced system and application performance,” said Brian Sparks, marketing working group chair, IBTA. “Products are now becoming available which follow the IBTA’s NDR 400Gb/s IB spec, and we look forward to seeing them represented in future Top500 lists.“

Published twice a year and publicly available, the TOP500 list ranks the world’s most powerful computer systems according to the Linpack benchmark rating system.

Record Turnout for 39th IB and RoCE Plugfest, Featuring NDR 400Gb/s IB and 400GbE
This year’s IBTA Plugfest was the first testing instance of NDR 400Gb/s IB and 400GbE products, paving the way for the roll-out of the fastest interconnected systems in 2022. The event, hosted by University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL) and in partnership with the Ethernet Alliance, provided the opportunity to perform interoperability testing of selected RDMA/RoCE-based Ethernet switch systems, adapter, NICS, and cables among a range of vendors.

Key highlights from the IB and RoCE Plugfest:

RDMA cable vendors: Amphenol Corp., Connpro Industries, Inc., Nvidia Corp., Panduit, Inc., The Siemon Company, TE Connectivity Corp.
RDMA device vendors: Arista Networks, Inc., Broadcom, Inc., Nvidia and SANBlaze Technology, Inc.
Test equipment vendors: Anritsu Corporation, Keysight Technologies, Inc., Rohde & Schwarz GmbH & Co. KG and Wilder Technologies, LLC.
15 RDMA devices were tested for compliance and interoperability
141 RDMA cables were tested for compliance and interoperability. Copper and optical cable types included SFP, QSFP, QSFP-DD, OSFP and hybrids
Keysight deployed a NDR IB solution for testing 400Gb/s Active Optical Cables

“The IBTA’s rigorous, independent third-party compliance and interoperability program ensures that each cable and device tested successfully meets end user needs and expectations of IB and RoCE ecosystems,” said Rupert Dance, chair, IBTA compliance and interoperability working group. “The ability of IBTA Plugfest participants to interact with engineers from many device and cable vendors and test equipment providers while resolving problems in real time is essential to the success, compliance and interoperability of all IB and RoCE solutions.“

The IBTA Plugfest is a benefit to members and creates a path to deliver to customers products that are compliant to the IB and RoCE specs and interoperable within the larger ecosystem. Each product that completes compliance and interoperability testing is compiled into the resulting IB Integrators’ List and RoCE Integrators’ List. The lists are technical resources that provide benefits to all users deploying RDMA-based fabrics. A range of customers leverage these results when determining which products to use when designing or upgrading their systems.