Switch Architecture Offers 40Gbps Server and Storage Connectivity

By DE Editors

Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. (Santa Clara, CA) announced the InfiniScale IV silicon switch architecture at Supercomputing 07 in Reno last week that extends InfiniBand’s capabilities in bandwidth, latency, scalability, and optimized data traffic management.

New switch systems based on the InfiniScale IV architecture supporting up to 40Gbps per port and 120Gbps for inter-switch links are expected to be available in the latter part of 2008.

Other InfiniScale IV architecture benefits include 60 nanosecond switch hop latency; 36-port switch devices for optimal scalability; adaptive Routing to optimize data traffic flow; and congestion control to adaptive routing that optimizes data rates at the source to most efficiently utilize the full bandwidth of the fabric while avoiding traffic contention scenarios.

Silicon products using the InfiniScale IV architecture will sample to customers in early 2008. Switch systems utilizing this silicon can be expected latter part of 2008.

Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. also announced it added a dual-port 10GBase-T to its 10Gb Ethernet NIC family in which all 10GigE cabling options provided by ConnectX EN Adapter Cards, including Copper CX4 and UTP, and Fiber SR, LR and LRM cables. Also available with PCI Express x8 Gen2 in addition to a single port version, these adapters integrate the ConnectX EN 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapter controller and the Ternaetics TeraPHY TN1010 transceiver supporting the IEEE 802.3an standard.

Three ConnectX EN based 10GBase-T adapters are available: MNTH18-XTC, Single Port UTP, PCI Express x8; the MNTH28-XTC, Dual Port UTP, PCI Express x8; and the MNTH29-XTC, Dual Port UTP, PCI Express x8 Gen2. They support all major operating systems and virtualization packages including Microsoft Windows, Linux, VMware and Xen.

Additional information can be found at Mellanox.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.