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Abstract
With business models constantly changing to keep pace with today’s Internet-based, global economy,
IT organizations are continually challenged to provide customers with high performance platforms
while controlling their cost. An increasing number of enterprise businesses are implementing scale-out
architectures as a cost-effective approach for scalable platforms, not just for high performance
computing (HPC) but also for financial services and Oracle-based database applications.
InfiniBand (IB) is one of the most important technologies that enable the adoption of cluster computing.
This technology brief describes InfiniBand as an interconnect technology used in cluster computing,
provides basic technical information, and explains the advantages of implementing InfiniBand-based
scale-out architectures.
Introduction
The overall performance of enterprise servers is determined by the synergetic relationship between
three main subsystems: processing, memory, and input/output. The multiprocessor architecture used
in the latest single-server systems (Figure 1) provides a high degree of parallel processing capability.
However, multiprocessor server architecture cannot scale cost effectively to a large number of
processing cores. Scale-out cluster computing that builds an entire system by connecting stand-alone
systems with interconnect technology has become widely implemented for HPC and enterprise data
centers around the world.
Figure 1.
Architecture of a dual-processor single server (node)
CPU(s)
Memory
Controller
Processor 1
Memory
PCI-X
Bridge
PCIe
Port
Controller
Ultra-3 SCSI
Fibre Channel
Gigabit Ethernet
320 MBps
400 MBps
> 1 Gbps
Memory
Controller
Processor 2
CPU(s)
Processor
Input/Output
InfiniBand
> 10 Gbps*
* 4x link, single data rate
