The OpenFabrics Alliance is a non-profit organization that promotes remote direct memory access (RDMA)

switched fabric Switched fabric or switching fabric is a network topology in which network Node (networking), nodes interconnect via one or more network switches (particularly crossbar switches). Because a switched fabric network spreads network traffic across m ...

technologies for server and storage connectivity. These high-speed data-transport technologies are used in high-performance computing facilities, in research and various industries. The OpenFabrics Alliance aims to develop

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

that supports the three major RDMA fabric technologies:

InfiniBand InfiniBand (IB) is a computer networking communications standard used in high-performance computing that features very high throughput and very low latency. It is used for data interconnect both among and within computers. InfiniBand is also used ...

RDMA over Converged Ethernet RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) or InfiniBand over Ethernet (IBoE) is a network protocol that allows remote direct memory access (RDMA) over an Ethernet network. It does this by encapsulating an InfiniBand (IB) transport packet over Ethernet. ...

(RoCE) and

iWARP iWARP is a computer networking protocol that implements remote direct memory access (RDMA) for efficient data transfer over Internet Protocol networks. Contrary to some accounts, iWARP is not an acronym. Because iWARP is layered on Internet Eng ...

. The software includes two packages, one that runs on

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

and

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

and one that runs on

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. The alliance worked with two large Linux distributors—

SUSE SUSE ( , ) is a German-based multinational open-source software company that develops and sells Linux products to business customers. Founded in 1992, it was the first company to market Linux for enterprise. It is the developer of SUSE Linux Ent ...

and

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become ass ...

—as well as

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

on compatibility with their operating systems.

History

Founded in June 2004 as the OpenIB Alliance, the organization originally developed an InfiniBand software stack for Linux. Initial funding for the Alliance was provided by the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...

. The alliance released the first version of the OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) in 2005. In 2005 the OpenIB Alliance announced support for Microsoft Windows. In 2006, the organization again expanded its charter to include support for iWARP, which is a transport technology that competes with InfiniBand. At that time the alliance changed its name to the OpenFabrics Alliance. Subsequent releases have added support for iWARP and Windows. In 2011, OFED stack was ported to

and included in FreeBSD 9.

OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution

A community of developers from hardware manufacturers, software vendors, system integrators, government agencies and academia to work on 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 Middleware is a type of computer software that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. It can be described as "software glue". Middleware makes it easier for software developers to implement co ...

, and user-level interfaces. It offers a range of standard protocols, including IPoIB (IP over InfiniBand ), SDP, SRP, iSER, RDS and DAPL (the Direct Access Programming Library). It also supports many other protocols, including various MPI implementations, and it supports many file systems, including Lustre and NFS over RDMA.

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 University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) is an independent test facility that provides interoperability and standards conformance testing for networking, telecommunications, data storage, and consumer technology produ ...

. The program enables manufacturers of InfiniBand and iWARP products to test and certify that their products support the OpenFabrics software stack, and test their compatibility with other products. The alliance sponsors interoperability events at the

University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, mo ...

. 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.

Members

Corporate members of the OpenFabrics Alliance include

Advanced Micro Devices Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufact ...

, Appro,

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...

Cray Inc. Cray Inc., a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is an American supercomputer manufacturer headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It also manufactures systems for data storage and analytics. Several Cray supercomputer systems are listed i ...

Chelsio Communications Chelsio Communications is a privately held technology company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California with a design center in Bangalore, India. Early venture capital funding came from Horizons Ventures, Invesco, Investor Growth Capital, NTT F ...

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

DataDirect Networks DataDirect Networks (DDN) is a privately-held data storage company, and is headquartered in Chatsworth, California, USA. Summary DDN provides storage systems for unstructured data and big data, like AI, analytics and high performance computi ...

Emulex Emulex Corporation is a provider of computer network connectivity, monitoring and management hardware and software. The company's I/O connectivity offerings, including its line of Ethernet and Fibre Channel-based connectivity products, are or w ...

Flextronics Flex Ltd. (previously known as Flextronics International Ltd. or Flextronics) is an American Singaporean-domiciled multinational diversified manufacturing company. It is the third largest global electronics manufacturing services (EMS), origi ...

Hewlett Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology corporation headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. It designs, develops, produces and sells telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics and various smar ...

, IBM,

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

LSI Corporation LSI Logic Corporation, an American company founded in Milpitas, California, was a pioneer in the ASIC and EDA industries. It evolved over time to design and sell semiconductors and software that accelerated storage and networking in data cente ...

Mellanox Technologies Mellanox Technologies Ltd. ( he, מלאנוקס טכנולוגיות בע"מ) was an Israeli-American multinational supplier of computer networking products based on InfiniBand and Ethernet technology. Mellanox offered adapters, switches, softwa ...

, NetEffect, Neterion,

NetApp NetApp, Inc. is an American hybrid cloud data services and data management company headquartered in San Jose, California. It has ranked in the Fortune 500 from 2012–2021. Founded in 1992 with an IPO in 1995, NetApp offers cloud data services ...

, NetXen,

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

, QLogic,

RapidIO The RapidIO architecture is a high-performance packet-switched electrical connection technology. RapidIO supports messaging, read/write and cache coherency semantics. Based on industry-standard electrical specifications such as those for Ethern ...

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

SuSE SUSE ( , ) is a German-based multinational open-source software company that develops and sells Linux products to business customers. Founded in 1992, it was the first company to market Linux for enterprise. It is the developer of SUSE Linux Ent ...

and System Fabric Works. Research members include: *

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...

Sandia National Laboratories Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), also known as Sandia, is one of three research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Headquartered in Kirtland Air Force Ba ...

Consulting members include the

Ethernet Alliance The Ethernet Alliance was incorporated in the US state of California in August 2005 and officially launched in January 2006 as a non-profit industry consortium to promote and support Ethernet. The objectives were to provide an unbiased, industry ...

, the

InfiniBand Trade Association InfiniBand (IB) is a computer networking communications standard used in high-performance computing that features very high throughput and very low latency. It is used for data interconnect both among and within computers. InfiniBand is also used ...

Lamprey Networks Lampreys (sometimes inaccurately called lamprey eels) are an ancient extant lineage of Agnatha, jawless fish of the order (biology), order Petromyzontiformes , placed in the superclass Cyclostomata. The adult lamprey may be characterized by ...

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

, and the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory. In 2007,

Credit Suisse Credit Suisse Group AG is a global investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland. Headquartered in Zürich, it maintains offices in all major financial centers around the world and is one of the nine global " ...

became the first financial-services firm to join the alliance.

References

{{reflist

External links

Official website
Computer memory Computer network organizations