difference between 10g ethernet switch and infiniband

[KAMALANATH_N_Intel]

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/021009-voltaire-switch.html?nlhtdcenter=rn_021709&nladname=021709datacenteral http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/021009-voltaire-switch.html?nlhtdcenter=rn_021709&nladname=021709datacenteral

Voltaire this week announced a 40Gbps infiniband switch for datacenters that's designed to provide a low latency fabric for large, high-performance clusters.

- i am bit confused with this inifiniband switch.

how this infiniband is differ from 10g ethernet switch. i believe 10G switch is the highest speed switch available in the market.

All i can understand abt inifiniband by googling is that inifiniband is switched fabric communications link primarily used in high performance computing.

can anyone please throw more light on this?

[idata]

Hello,

Infiniband is a channel based architecture providing reliable lossless data transfers. Ethernet is not reliable. See IB trade association for technical details:http://www.infinibandta.org/home http://www.infinibandta.org/home See OpenFabrics Alliance for software solutionshttp://www.openfabrics.org/ http://www.openfabrics.org/ Ethernet is running at 10Gb/s today, Infiniband is 40Gb/s.Don

[Mark_H_Intel]

With the right Ethernet adapters, you can use 10 Gig Ethernet for high performance computing clusters for applications that normally use Infiniband. Check out http://www.neteffect.com/solutions-clustering.php High-performance Scale-out and Clustering, other solutions, and the product leaflet for the 10 Gig adapter on www.neteffect.com. These Ethernet adapters use an IETF standard called http://insidehpc.com/2006/03/04/what-is-iwarp/ iWARP to offload TCP processing to hardware.

Intel bought NetEffect in October, 2008, and as an Intel employee, I might be a little biased. I am excited about these adapters being added to the Intel lineup and their fit with high performance computing; therefore, I point to these adapters with some pride in their capabilities.

[Mark_H_Intel]

You might also be interested in this entry from the Server Room Blog: /community/openportit/server/blog/2008/02/13/data-center-fabric Data Center Fabric.