InfiniBand(SM) Trade Association (IBTA) Announces Accelerating Momentum for InfiniBand Interconnect Standard.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Soaring OEM and End-User Adoption to Be Highlighted at September 25 Developers Conference Hosted by the IBTA and OpenFabrics Alliance

The InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) today announced that the InfiniBand interconnect standard is seeing significant momentum as customer and OEM adoption dramatically accelerates. The IBTA estimates that over 500 end-user sites have now deployed InfiniBand products in production applications, many with multiple InfiniBand clusters. InfiniBand has a strong presence in the TOP500 list of the world's most powerful computers and is the fastest growing cluster interconnect in high performance computing (HPC). InfiniBand connectivity is being offered from virtually every leading server vendor and is beginning to see strong growth in the rate of enterprise deployments.

In a recent IDC report(a), IDC expects that InfiniBand will garner approximately 18 percent of revenue for interconnects on high-performance and technical computing (HPTC) clusters deployed in 2006. By 2010, the market will account for about $2.6 billion.

"We expect all segments of the interconnect market to see growth, with InfiniBand-based interconnects showing the strongest growth numbers (47.1 percent) through 2010, which is typical of a successful market entry," said Chris Willard, Research Vice President at IDC. "We see InfiniBand's growth as driven by its ability to provide a competitive standards-based technology for cluster interconnects, which leads to a strong product development and support ecosystem. Thus we expect InfiniBand-based solutions to grow from about one-tenth of the market in 2004 to over a third of the market in 2010."

InfiniBand continues to be the fastest growing cluster interconnect according to the 27th edition of the TOP500 list of the world's most powerful computers. There are now 42 InfiniBand-based supercomputers registered in the June 2006 list. Three of the top 10 most prominent ranking positions use the InfiniBand interconnect - NASA/Ames Research Center, Sandia National Laboratories and GSIC Center at the Tokyo Institute of Technology  - and two more national laboratories using InfiniBand are expected to join the top ten list next year.

Success in the HPC market is driving adoption into corporate data centers. Dozens of enterprise customers - primarily in the financial services, manufacturing and energy segments - are now using InfiniBand interconnects to improve their competitiveness. In addition, many storage leaders are currently shipping storage products that include InfiniBand technology.

Another major driver of the success of InfiniBand is the widespread availability of InfiniBand technology from the leading server vendors. Over 35 different server manufacturers around the globe now offer InfiniBand interconnects to their end user customers. Additionally, all of the major systems vendors have incorporated InfiniBand options on their blade server platforms.

"As InfiniBand prevails in high-end clustered computing, the technology is also gaining a foothold in storage and embedded applications," said Dr. Tom Bradicich, co-chair of the IBTA, IBM Fellow, and CTO of IBM System x and BladeCenter servers. "The cost of InfiniBand technology continues to decline while the performance and feature set continues to improve. The original vision of an open, low-cost, high-performance unified fabric for both network communications and storage is seen now in established and growing customer deployments."

IBTA to host joint developer's conference with OpenFabrics Alliance in one week

The IBTA will provide an update on InfiniBand momentum and strategic direction next week when it hosts a joint developer's conference with the OpenFabrics Alliance on September 25 at the Moscone Center West in San Francisco. The Open Fabrics software stack is also accelerating the interest in and adoption of InfiniBand as it has now standardized the software interfaces and protocols that work with InfiniBand. The event is being held in co-location with the Fall 2006 Intel Developer Forum (IDF). Interested parties may register at:

http://www.acteva.com/go/IBTAOFADevCon06

About the InfiniBand Trade Association

The Internet is creating an increased demand for server computer I/O subsystem performance, scalability, reliability and flexibility. A shift to a switched fabric-based I/O architecture will enable industry participants to meet this increased demand. The InfiniBand Trade Association developed a specification for a channel-based, switched fabric architecture that provides a scalable performance range of 2.5Gbps to 120Gbps, meeting current and future needs from entry level to high-end enterprise systems. InfiniBand I/O is the only open standard available today with remote direct memory access (RDMA). The InfiniBand Trade Association represents the industry's choice for developing I/O technologies that will keep pace with the demands of the Internet age.

InfiniBand(TM/SM) is a trademark and service mark of the InfiniBand Trade Association. Other names and brands are the property of their respective owners.

(a)IDC Special Study, The Cluster Revolution in Technical Markets 2006, #06C4775, May 2006