InfiniBand is a high-performance,
multi-purpose network architecture based on a switch design often called a
"switched fabric." InfiniBand is designed for use in I/O networks
such as storage area networks (SAN) or in cluster networks. InfiniBand supports
network bandwidth between 2.5 Gbps and 30 Gbps.
Specifications
for the InfiniBand architecture span multiple layers of the OSI model.
InfiniBand features physical and data-link layer hardware like Ethernet and
ATM, though with more advanced technology. InfiniBand also features
connection-oriented and connectionless transport protocols analogous to TCP and
UDP. InfiniBand uses IPv6 for addressing at the network layer.
InfiniBand
will possibly someday replace PCI as the system bus for PCs. Today's
applications of InfiniBand, though are limited to cluster supercomputers and
other specialized network systems. InfiniBand hasn't yet become a mainstream
technology because standard network software must be modified and/or re-built
to work with InfiniBand. InfiniBand bypasses traditional network protocol
stacks like TCP/IP because of the performance limitations of these protocols,
but in the process it breaks backward compatibility of applications. WinSock
and other network programming libraries must be made InfiniBand-aware, without
sacrificing the performance gains, before InfiniBand can be widely deployed.
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