Press release

New InfiniBand® and RoCE Specification Introduces Memory Placement Extensions to Significantly Reduce Persistent Memory Latency

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The InfiniBand® Trade Association (IBTA), a global organization dedicated to developing and furthering the adoption of RDMA technologies, today announced the availability of the IBTA Specification Volume 1 Release 1.5, which adds support for Memory Placement Extensions (MPE) to reduce latency in Persistent Memory (PMEM) applications by 10x. Data persistence is guaranteed using RDMA and the new MPE operations via InfiniBand or RoCE interconnects. This represents a significant benefit for PMEM deployments in Enterprise Data Centers (EDC) and High Performance Center (HPC) environments. The new specification also features support for higher bandwidth NDR InfiniBand and minimum bandwidth setting capabilities via the Enhanced Port Arbiter.

For technical details of IBTA Specification Volume 1 Release 1.5, download IBTA’s complete overview presentation.

Key Features:

  • Memory Placement Extensions – enable hardware OEMs and software developers to implement the MPE operations RDMA Flush and RDMA Atomic Write to enhance PMEM performance and reduce overall latency by a factor of 10.
  • InfiniBand now supports NDR which allows 400 Gbps speeds on a 4-lane port configuration. It also supports 2x lanes which allows much greater port density while still supporting 200 Gbps on these ports.
  • Quality of Service has been enhanced via an updated VL Arbitration mechanism which allows a user to specify minimum bandwidth on physical ports and the ability to control virtualized port arbitration by setting rate liming and bandwidth sharing.

“The IBTA has been diligently developing these exciting new InfiniBand and RoCE features as a response to the industry’s ever-growing demand for higher bandwidth and lower latency connectivity,” said Rupert Dance, IBTA Compliance & Interoperability Working Group Chair and Link Working Group Co-Chair. “We look forward to seeing the industry take advantage of the new IBTA Specification Volume 1 Release 1.5 capabilities, especially the immediate benefits that MPE will have to reduce latency in PMEM applications, which are increasingly prevalent in HPC, enterprise and cloud data centers.”

Resources:

About the InfiniBand® Trade Association

The InfiniBand® Trade Association was founded in 1999 and is chartered with maintaining and furthering the InfiniBand and the RoCE specifications. The IBTA is led by a distinguished steering committee that includes HPE, IBM, Intel Corporation, Marvell Technology Group and NVIDIA. Other members of the IBTA represent leading enterprise IT vendors who are actively contributing to the advancement of the InfiniBand and RoCE specifications. The IBTA markets and promotes InfiniBand and RoCE from an industry perspective through online, marketing and public relations engagements, and unites the industry through IBTA-sponsored technical events and resources. For more information on the IBTA, visit www.infinibandta.org.

InfiniBand (TM/SM) and RoCE are trademark and service marks of the IBTA. Other names and brands are the property of their respective owners.