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Omni-Path Architecture (OPA) is a high-performance communication architecture developed by
Production of Omni-Path products started in 2015 and delivery of these products started in the first quarter of 2016. In November 2015, adapters based on the 2-port "Wolf River"
Cornelis Networks website
{{Computer-bus Intel products Computer networks Parallel computing Supercomputing
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 ...
. It aims for low communication latency, low power consumption and a high throughput
Network throughput (or just throughput, when in context) refers to the rate of message delivery over a communication channel in a communication network, such as Ethernet or packet radio. The data that these messages contain may be delivered ov ...
. It directly competes with 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 ...
. Intel planned to develop technology based on this architecture for exascale computing
Exascale computing refers to Computer system, computing systems capable of calculating at least 1018 IEEE 754 Double Precision (64-bit) operations (multiplications and/or additions) per second (exaFLOPS)"; it is a measure of supercomputer perform ...
. The current owner of Omni-Path is Cornelis Networks.
History
Production of Omni-Path products started in 2015 and delivery of these products started in the first quarter of 2016. In November 2015, adapters based on the 2-port "Wolf River" ASIC
An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-efficien ...
were announced, using QSFP28 connectors with channel speeds up to 100 Gbit/s. Simultaneously, switches based on the 48-port "Prairie River" ASIC were announced.
First models of that series were available starting in 2015.
In April 2016, implementation of the 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 ...
"verbs" interface for the Omni-Path fabric was discussed.
In October 2016, 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 ...
, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
The Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) is an American multinational information technology company based in Spring, Texas. It is a business-focused organization which works in servers, storage, networking, containerization software and ...
, Dell
Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...
, Lenovo
Lenovo Group Limited, trading as Lenovo ( , zh, c=联想, p=Liánxiǎng), is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, personal computers, software, servers, conv ...
, Samsung
Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...
, Seagate Technology
Seagate Technology Holdings plc is an American Computer data storage, data storage company. It was incorporated in 1978 as Shugart Technology and commenced business in 1979. Since 2010, the company has been incorporated in Dublin, Ireland, with ...
, Micron Technology
Micron Technology, Inc. is an American producer of computer memory and computer data storage including dynamic random-access memory, flash memory, and solid-state drives (SSDs). It is headquartered in Boise, Idaho. Micron's consumer produc ...
, Western Digital
Western Digital Corporation is an American data storage company headquartered in San Jose, California. Established in 1970, the company is one of the world's largest manufacturers of hard disk drives (HDDs).
History
1970s
Western Digital ...
and SK Hynix
SK Hynix Inc. () is a South Korean supplier of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips and flash memory chips. SK Hynix is one of the world's largest semiconductor vendors.
Founded as Hyundai Electronics in 1983, SK Hynix was integrated into ...
announced a joint consortium called Gen-Z to develop an open specification and architecture for non-volatile storage and memory products—including Intel's 3D Xpoint
3D XPoint (pronounced ''three-D cross point'') was a discontinued non-volatile memory (NVM) technology developed jointly by Intel and Micron Technology. It was announced in July 2015 and was available on the open market under the brand name Opt ...
technology—which might in part compete against Omni-Path.
Intel offered their Omni-Path products and components via other (hardware) vendors. For example, Dell EMC offered Intel Omni-Path as ''Dell Networking H-series'', following the naming-standard of Dell Networking in 2017.
In July 2019, Intel announced it would not continue development of Omni-Path networks and canceled OPA 200 series (200-Gbps variant of Omni-Path).
In September 2020, Intel announced that the Omni-Path network products and technology would be spun out into a new venture with Cornelis Networks. Intel would continue to maintain support for legacy Omni-Path products, while Cornelis Networks continues the product line, leveraging existing Intel intellectual property related to Omni-Path architecture.
In 2021, Cornelis announced Omni-Path Express, which replaces PSM2-based drivers and middleware, which trace back to PathScale
PathScale Inc. was a company that developed a highly optimizing C, C++, and Fortran compiler suite for the x86-64 microprocessor architectures. It derives from the SGI compilers for the MIPS architecture R10000 processor, called MIPSPro.
His ...
's PSM created in 2003, for the existing Omni-Path hardware, with a native libfabric provider.
See also
* iWARP *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)
* 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)
References
External links
Cornelis Networks website
{{Computer-bus Intel products Computer networks Parallel computing Supercomputing