InfiniBand Leaders Form OpenIB Alliance.Business Editors/High-Tech Writers SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 15, 2004 Group Chartered with Delivery of Open Source Solutions for Growing InfiniBand(a) Market Leading InfiniBand companies today announced the formation of the OpenIB Alliance, an industry association chartered to deliver a single open source Linux-based software stack (1) A stack that is implemented in memory rather than in hardware registers. See stack. (2) A generic reference to a set of system programs or a set of application programs that form a complete system. See stack. for deploying InfiniBand architecture in compliance with the InfiniBand Trade Association The InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) is the standards organization that defines and maintains the InfiniBand specification. It is an industry consortium. The IBTA was established in 1999, and its most prominent members include Cisco, IBM, Intel, Mellanox, QLogic, Sun and interconnect standard. A standard set of InfiniBand drivers for the Linux operating system operating system (OS) Software that controls the operation of a computer, directs the input and output of data, keeps track of files, and controls the processing of computer programs. , referred to as a software stack, is aimed at improving interoperability and reducing the time and cost required to complete mainstream datacenter and High Performance Computing (HPC (Handheld PC) A palmtop computer that weighs less than one pound and runs specialized versions of popular applications. Microsoft coined the term for its Windows CE operating system, which is an abbreviated version of Windows. See Pocket PC. ) deployments with InfiniBand and Linux. The OpenIB Alliance is comprised of technology vendors and end user organizations, including: Dell; Engenio Information Technologies, Inc. (formerly LSI LSI: see integrated circuit. (Large Scale Integration) Between 3,000 and 100,000 transistors on a chip. See SSI, MSI, VLSI and ULSI. Logic Storage Systems); IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) ; InfiniCon; Intel; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: see Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. (body) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - (LLNL) A research organaisatin operated by the University of California under a contract with the US Department of Energy. ; Mellanox Technologies; Network Appliance (1) A specialized device for use on a network. For example, Web servers, cache servers and file servers can be implemented as general-purpose computers with the appropriate software or as network appliances, which are computers dedicated to a single function and cannot do anything ; Sandia National Laboratories Sandia National Laboratories, which is managed and operated by the Sandia Corporation (a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation), is a major United States Department of Energy research and development national laboratory with two locations, one in Albuquerque, New ; Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Topspin Communications; Veritas and Voltaire. Membership is open to all companies with an interest in developing a common Linux implementation for InfiniBand deployments. "InfiniBand architecture is gaining momentum in enterprise deployments, and with this comes the opportunity to ensure that fabrics feature the extensive benefits envisioned by the architects of the technology," said Jim Pappas, director of initiative marketing for Intel's Enterprise Platform Group. "The formation of the OpenIB Alliance and anticipated software stack availability will enable InfiniBand customers to deploy solutions with the confidence of both a solid software foundation and interoperability across industry offerings." InfiniBand Goes Enterprise with Deployments With a growing presence in the computing industry's bi-annual Top 500 Fastest Supercomputers list, there's growing demand for InfiniBand among HPC customers. The technology is also becoming more common in traditional enterprise environments. Computing clusters using InfiniBand connectivity are in use globally, reaching from small eight-node clusters up into clusters of over one thousand nodes. In addition, key application providers such as Oracle have chosen InfiniBand as a critical enabling technology to maximize the benefit from scalable enterprise applications. The OpenIB Alliance software stacks are complementary to the InfiniBand Trade Association's (IBTA IBTA InfiniBand Trade Association IBTA Instituto Brasileiro de Tecnologia Avançada IBTA Instituto Boliviano de Tecnologia Agropecuaria IBTA International Business Travel Association IBTA International Business Training Association ) InfiniBand architecture specifications. The OpenIB Alliance was formed outside the IBTA to address software development typically outside the scope of the IBTA charter. The OpenIB Alliance will publish its software stack delivery schedule in Q3, with future software enhancements expected on an ongoing basis. Companies interested in making contributions to the Alliance's developments are encouraged to join the OpenIB Alliance. Information regarding membership can be found on the organization's website: www.openib.org. About the OpenIB Alliance The OpenIB Alliance was formed in June 2004 with a mission to deliver industry standard Linux software stacks for InfiniBand environments. Formed by InfiniBand industry leaders, the organization is open to industry members interested in contributing to the development of standard OpenIB software configurations. More information about the organization can be found at www.openib.org. (a) Names and titles are property of their respective owners. |
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