Intel and Enterprise Industry Leaders Collaborate On InfiniBand Eval Program

Intel, along with a host of leading enterprise companies, today announced the delivery of the InfiniBand evaluation program, designed to help IT organizations evaluate initial InfiniBand fabrics supporting Intel architecture server platforms. InfiniBand architecture is a high performance I/O fabric for server platforms that will be supported in products shipping next year.

Developed and driven by Intel, the evaluation program brings together early InfiniBand adopters with suppliers of the technology. Intel will form independent teams around each evaluation project and drive the creation of a proposal that is responsive to the needs of the early adopter. Intel will assist in finding a lead supplier of the InfiniBand solution and track progress to ensure that all timelines are tracked and needs of the early adopter are met.

The industry program will feature solutions from such companies as Dell, IBM, InfiniCon, InfiniSwitch, Intel, JNI, Lane15 Software, Libra Networks, Mellanox Technologies, OmegaBand, Oracle, Paceline, RedSwitch, Topspin, VIEO and Voltaire.

“With the InfiniBand evaluation program, Intel is able to deliver an ecosystem of InfiniBand-enabled enterprise solutions on Intel architecture platforms to our leading customers,” said Tom Macdonald, general manager of Intel’s Advanced Components Division. “With strong industry participation, the InfiniBand evaluation program will provide best-in-class products and industry resources to fuel the deployment of initial InfiniBand fabrics.”

Many customers have already expressed interest to participate in the program, including in the area of early deployments of InfiniBand fabric connectivity. Customers participating in the program include Cornell University, the University of Washington and Wells Fargo Corporation.

“Wells Fargo is excited and pleased to engage and partner with industry leaders in evaluating the benefits of the InfiniBand architecture, technology and various products to develop a complete solution to deploy,” said John Blackman, Wells Fargo enterprise systems engineer.

“Cornell has a long history of working with technology leaders to provide leading standards-based clustering solutions,” said Dave Lifka, Cornell Theory Center chief technology officer. “InfiniBand architecture extends standards-based, high-performance clustering capability to the cluster fabric. We look forward to working with InfiniSwitch and Intel in the delivery of our InfiniBand solution.”

The InfiniBand architecture is a new I/O infrastructure technology that simplifies and speeds server-to-server connections and links to other server-related systems in such areas as remote storage and networking devices. InfiniBand architecture’s easier connectivity, reduced latency, improved bandwidth and enhanced interoperability features increase the performance, reliability and scalability of Intel Architecture-based servers to meet the growth needs of emerging e-Business data centers.

Intel is among the founding companies of the InfiniBand Trade Association, and is a leader in delivering InfiniBand ecosystems to Intel Architecture servers. To generate broad, industry-wide implementation of an InfiniBand infrastructure, Intel has founded a wide range of industry enabling programs.