Talk:InfiniBand
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[edit] What is Infiniband, anyway?
It seems to me that we need to find a better expression for what Infiniband really is.
Is it:
- a switched fabric communications link (current version of the article, 22 September 2006);
- a switched fabric computer bus architecture (revision as of 15:39, 28 August 2006);
- a point-to-point high-speed switch fabric interconnect architecture (as of 00:21, 22 August 2006); or
- a high-speed serial computer bus (as of 21:12, 19 June 2006)?
I would say Infiniband is not "a bus", but also not "a link". "Arhitecture" is definitely better than "link", IMHO. How about "technology"? "Protocol"? "Network"? "Communication protocol"? "Serial network data transmission technology"? (just brainstorming)
Please comment. Thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Salsus (talk • contribs).
- How about a "computer network technology" or "computer network architecture"? -- intgr 18:08, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Performance Citations
Someone needs to cite where the performance (specificially througput) results were found.
rivimey: I have included some example latencies for specific devices; there seems to be wide variation here. The devices chosen were simply those found in a google search, and the numbers are those stated by the manufacturer web page. I found one archived email indicating that, as usual, the manuf had overstated things in their opinion.
[edit] Host Channel Adapter
AFAIK, the host channel adapter (HCA) term is unique to InfiniBand (as is target channel adapter (TCA)) so it probably doesn't make sense to have a separate encyclopedia entry for either.
13:59, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
- There is no HCA article to merge with at the moment. I'm deleting the "suggested merge" tag. Alvestrand 10:02, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
Host Channel Adapter and InfiniBand should be merged together at the present time, though it may change in the future.
[edit] Timeline?
Can the orignial author change the sentence in the top paragraph containing: "In the past 12 months (...)"? I have no idea when the article was written, but maybe it should better be something like 'Since 2001, all major vendors are selling (...)". Mipmip 18:32, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Copyrighted Content? / Neutrality
The initial paragraph seems to be copied exactly from "http://www.mellanox.com/company/infiniband.php". In fact, the whole article sounds very much as though it was written by an InfiniBand salesman (apologies if this suspection is wrong). The information about the companies doesn't belong here in my opinion. It also doesn't mention similar competing technologies. I added the "Advert" tag. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 138.246.7.12 (talk • contribs).
If you look down through the history you'll see that various discussions of how InfiniBand relates to other technologies and challenges it faces have been deleted. Got tired of fighting with this one. Ghaff 23:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
- Looks like many offending edits have been done here: [1]. The IP address 63.251.237.3 belongs to "Mellanox Technologies, Inc." so they obviously had an agenda. I'll revert these changes now, and I'd be happy to give a hand removing any future POV edits. I can't see any obvious fights (as you put it) in the history, though. -- intgr 08:49, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
rivimey: I have changed this para significantly: I hope the result is (a) acceptable and (b) correct [I am not an IB expert!). It would be good if someone has the time to register at the Infiniband trade assoc's site to get the spec; this might help with hard facts :-) However, I am not sure how copyright relates to such activity so I haven't done so.
[edit] Only the last two paragraphs seem to be an "advert"
Most of this article is simply a fact-based history of InfiniBand. It seems NPOV, and points out the original broad expectation of InfiniBand and the narrower reality of today's uses of InfiniBand. The comment of the lack of information of InfiniBand competitors seems out of place. Including competitors would risk turning the article into an advertisement or sales discussion. No one has requested mentioning competitors to Fibre Channel in its Wikipedia article. With InfiniBand's limited application primarily to low-latency HPC clustering interconnects, the only competing/alternative technologies today are SCI and Myrinet, and both of those technologies have been largely displaced by InfiniBand. The other alternatives today for server clustering are either higher latency technologies such as Ethernet, or low-latency protocols over Ethernet mediums, which are not widely accepted.
Storage over InfiniBand is a niche area, but important in the InfiniBand discussion. The value proposition for InfiniBand based storage is two-fold: One, higher bandwidths than Fibre Channel (roughly 2X 4Gb Fibre Channel, going to 8X with DDR InfiniBand); and two, simpler networking with InfiniBand clusters, not requiring two different switching mediums and gateways/routers between the two.
The HyperTunnel comments are irrelevant. There is no information at the link provided on HyperTunnel over Infiniband. This is a nascent technology/proposal at best. Newisys Horus, which HyperTunnel over Infiniband is suggested as a competitor, has no major OEMs. The market for a large Opteron SMP server has not emerged yet, and it is premature to suggest HyperTunnel over Infiniband is the answer here. AMD has suggested it will offer greater SMP scalability in future Opteron designs, so both Newisys Horus and HyperTunnel over Infiniband may be irrelevant eventually.
I recommend the part about InfiniBand based storage be rewritten to explain the why rather than the who, and the final paragraph be removed. Regarding competitors and/or alternatives to InfinBand moves the discussion from objective to subjective, and opens the floodgates to NPOV issues. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.219.195.185 (talk • contribs).
