The OpenFabrics Alliance is a non-profit organization that promotes

remote direct memory access In computing, remote direct memory access (RDMA) is a direct memory access from the memory of one computer into that of another without involving either one's operating system. This permits high-throughput, low- latency networking, which is especia ...

(RDMA)

switched fabric Switched fabric or switching fabric is a network topology in which network nodes interconnect via one or more network switches (particularly crossbar switches). Because a switched fabric network spreads network traffic across multiple physical l ...

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 Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

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) is a network protocol which allows remote direct memory access (RDMA) over an Ethernet network. There are multiple RoCE versions. RoCE v1 is an Ethernet link layer protocol and hence allows communication between ...

(RoCE) and

iWARP iWarp was an experimental parallel supercomputer architecture developed as a joint project by Intel and Carnegie Mellon University. The project started in 1988, as a follow-up to CMU's previous WARP research project, in order to explore building ...

. The software includes two packages, one that runs on

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

and one that runs on

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. The alliance worked with two large Linux distributors—

SUSE Suse may refer to: * Fort Suse, a military installation in the Kurdistan region of Iraq * Suse Heinze (1920–2018), German diver See also * SUSE (disambiguation) * Sus (disambiguation) * Susa, an ancient capital of Elam and the Achaemenid Emp ...

and

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North ...

—as well as

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

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 energy production, the research and development of nuclear power, the military's nuclear w ...

. 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 program 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 imple ...

, 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 organization that provides interoperability and standards conformance testing for networking, telecommunications, data storage, and consumer technology ...

. 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 university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire, United States. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant coll ...

. 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 corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a Information technology, hardware and F ...

, Appro,

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

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,

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...

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 comput ...

Emulex Emulex Corporation was an American computer hardware company active from 1978 to 2015. The company was a provider of computer network connectivity, monitoring and management hardware and software. The company's I/O connectivity offerings, inclu ...

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

Hewlett Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, Californi ...

Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ("Huawei" sometimes stylized as "HUAWEI"; ; zh, c=华为, p= ) is a Chinese multinational corporationtechnology company in Longgang, Shenzhen, Longgang, Shenzhen, Guangdong. Its main product lines include teleco ...

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

LSI Corporation LSI Logic Corporation was an American company founded in Santa Clara, 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 dat ...

Mellanox Technologies Mellanox Technologies Ltd. () was an Israeli-American multinational supplier of computer networking products based on InfiniBand and Ethernet technology. Mellanox offered adapters, switches, software, cables and silicon for markets including high ...

, NetEffect, Neterion,

NetApp NetApp, Inc. is an American data infrastructure company that provides unified data storage, integrated data services, and cloud operations (CloudOps) solutions to enterprise customers. The company is based in San Jose, California. It has ranked ...

, NetXen,

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...

QLogic QLogic Corporation was an American manufacturer of networking server and storage networking connectivity and application acceleration products, based in Aliso Viejo, California through 2016. QLogic's products include Fibre Channel adapters, c ...

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

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 may refer to: * Fort Suse, a military installation in the Kurdistan region of Iraq * Suse Heinze (1920–2018), German diver See also * SUSE (disambiguation) * Sus (disambiguation) * Susa, an ancient capital of Elam and the Achaemenid Emp ...

and System Fabric Works. Research members include: *

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Livermore, California, United States. Originally established in 1952, the laboratory now i ...

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development Laboratory, laboratories of the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, United States Department of Energy ...

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 B ...

Consulting members include the

Ethernet Alliance The Ethernet Alliance is an industry consortium founded in 2005 to promote and support Ethernet. Organization The Ethernet Alliance work groups are called subcommittees. These subcommittees are focused on efforts around specific standards-based ...

, the InfiniBand Trade Association, Lamprey Networks,

Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...

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

Credit Suisse Credit Suisse Group AG (, ) was a global Investment banking, investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland. According to UBS, eventually Credit Suisse was to be fully integrated into UBS. While the integration ...

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

References

{{reflist

External links

Official website
Computer memory Computer network organizations