OpenFabrics Alliance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The OpenFabrics Alliance[1] is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to evangelizing and facilitating the adoption of RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) fabric technologies for server and storage connectivity. These high-speed, data-transport technologies are used worldwide in corporate data centers, high-performance computing facilities, research institutes, and industries such as bioinformatics, electronic design, engineering, entertainment & media, financial services, and oil & gas.
The technical mission of the OpenFabrics Alliance is to develop a unified, open-source software stack that supports the two major RDMA fabric technologies -- InfiniBand and iWARP, which is also known as RDMA over Ethernet. The software stack includes two packages, one that runs on Linux and one that runs on Windows. The OpenFabrics Alliance is working with the two largest Linux distributors -- Novell and Red Hat -- as well as Microsoft to ensure that the OpenFabrics software stack is compatible with their respective operating systems.
Members of the OpenFabrics Alliance include leading chip manufacturers, database providers, national laboratories, network equipment manufacturers, server & storage vendors, software companies, workstation manufacturers, and more.
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[edit] History
Founded in June 2004 as the OpenIB Alliance, the organization was originally focused on developing a standardized, Linux-based InfiniBand software stack. Initial funding for the Alliance was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy.
In 2005, the OpenIB Alliance committed itself to supporting Windows, a move that would make the Alliance’s software stack truly cross-platform. And in 2006, the organization again expanded its charter to include support for iWARP, which is a transport technology that competes with InfiniBand. It was at this time that the OpenIB Alliance changed its name to the OpenFabrics Alliance.
The first version of the OpenFabrics software stack, known as OFED (OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution) was released in 2005. It supported InfiniBand and ran on Linux. Subsequent releases have added support for iWARP and Windows. OFED-1.3 is the latest stable release of the OpenFabrics software stack.
[edit] OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution
A community of developers from hardware manufacturers, software vendors, system integrators, government agencies and academia are continually advancing OFED. The OpenFabrics Alliance provides architectures, software repositories, interoperability tests, bug databases, workshops, and BSD- and GPL-licensed code to facilitate development.
The OFED stack includes software drivers, core kernel code, middleware, and user-level interfaces. It offers a range of standard protocols, including IPoIB, SDP, SRP, iSER, RDS and DAPL. It also supports many other protocols, including various MPI implementations, and it supports many file systems, including Lustre and NFS over RDMA.
[edit] Interoperability Testing
On June 25, 2007, the OpenFabrics Alliance announced the OFA-UNH-IOL Logo Program in partnership with the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory. The program enables manufacturers of InfiniBand and iWARP products to test and certify that their products support the OpenFabrics software stack, and test the compatibility of their software and hardware with other products that have earned the OFA-UNH-IOL logo.
The OpenFabrics Alliance sponsors multiple interoperability events at the University of New Hampshire each year, providing vendors with ongoing opportunities to earn the OFA-UNH-IOL logo for their products. The test scenarios are available to the public, as are the test results for all products that earn the logo. During interoperability events, all participating companies have the opportunity to observe all tests run on all products.
[edit] Current members
Corporate members of the OpenFabrics Alliance include Advanced Micro Devices, Appro, Chelsio Communications, Cisco Systems, Data Direct Networks, Flextronics, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Linux Networx, LSI Corporation, Mellanox Technologies, NetEffect, Neterion, NetApp, NetXen, Oracle Corporation, QLogic, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, System Fabric Works, Voltaire, and Xsigo Systems.
Research members include Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories.
Consulting members include the Ethernet Alliance, the InfiniBand Trade Association, Lamprey Networks, Ohio State University, and the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab. In 2007, Credit Suisse became the first financial service firm to join the Alliance.
