Coffee says what he likes about InfiniBand is its ability to support virtualization, remote direct memory access (RDMA), and data transfer rates of 10 Gbit/s and eventually 30 Gbit/s over copper. All those roll into a technology with characteristics you cant find in other emerging technologies, he says.
Until now, InfiniBand has largely been limited to high-performance computing and database clustering, often in large laboratories. Analyst Arun Taneja of The Taneja Group says Topspins deal with IBM could extend that trend into enterprises, allowing them to build their own supercomputers: Using InfiniBand, you can gang up 25 or up to 100-plus Intel servers that cost next to nothing and build up a supercomputer from that."
Topspin has been more OEM-centric than its two primary InfiniBand switch competitors, Voltaire Inc. and InfiniCon Systems Inc. Topspin, for instance, also has an OEM deal with Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to provide Fibre Channel and Gigabit Ethernet I/O modules for Sun's InfiniBand-based server platforms.
For its part, Voltaire has gained traction with laboratories. It announced Monday that the Ohio Supercomputer Center is using its switches and management software. Sandia National Laboratories also uses Voltaire switches.
Like Topspin, Voltaire sees action heating up in the enterprise, where Voltaire marketing VP Arun Jain says his company expects to see more traction soon. The next market for InfiniBand is the enterprise or data center, Jain says. Another partnership may help: Voltaire has paired with Hitachi Ltd. (NYSE: HIT; Paris: PHA) to provide an InfiniBand solution for Oracles Database 10g in Japan.
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
