Shulou(Shulou.com)06/01 Report--

Since ancient times, there has been no shortage of wonderful things that end without a beginning. I call it a martyr.

InfiniBand is one of them, although it has the potential to fall, I still want to applaud it.

If Ethernet is designed to connect hosts together, then the original intention of InfiniBand is to dismember them, and this genetic difference is destined for a war, which is later, of course.

The server is powerful, but the PCI bus is too slow, and its parallelization design is not suitable for the high-speed environment at all. The correct way is to serialize and increase the clock frequency at the same time, because parallelization simply can not stand the improvement of the clock frequency and will crash. InfiniBand aims to pull the bus outside the chassis and provide a high-speed serial transmission path. it is successful because it separates the end-to-end complexity and is no longer determined by the bus itself. this idea is correct, just as the evolution of Ethernet from CSMA/CD broadcast network to switched Ethernet is the same.

The control logic is migrated from the link itself to both ends of the link. So hub came out, and for hub without a controller, as its Chinese name suggests, it was a hub, and then the concept of bridge was introduced, and the Ethernet bridge later became a switch, and so far, InfiniBand was following the same path. It may have realized that parallel transmission and high-frequency clock could not be available at the same time, so it adopted the square formula of high-frequency clock plus serial, just like switching Ethernet. The bus topology is changed to a point-to-point topology, using message routing, which is really the same as an Ethernet frame. If InfiniBand continues in this direction, it will not only replace PCI,PCI-X, but also probably compete with Ethernet, which has not been defeated since it was born, relying on cost KO rivals. Although InfiniBand is a little worse in this respect, it has plenty of time to improve. Didn't Ethernet go through the expensive coaxial era at first?

The architecture of InfiniBand and Ethernet is really very similar, but one difference is that InfiniBand is flat, and Ethernet is part of the network protocol stack, which can interface with IP, which is also its job. And InfiniBand is also loyal to its own job, it just wants to pull the peripherals out of the chassis to form a new high-speed and arbitrarily expandable server bus architecture. If you want to increase the bus bandwidth or add a new device, it is very simple, just add a cable! This has become the killer mace of InfiniBand. Because it can be on the outside of the chassis, this physical separation makes the InfiniBand switch a separate device rather than a motherboard like the PCI controller. Anyway, everything is perfect.

At this point, it will be a little sad to go on.

Cost problems, coupled with a sharp drop in investment caused by the bursting of the dotcom bubble, InfiniBand's own problems have led to the departure of many of its supporters and even sponsors, parents and loved ones have left, InfiniBand appears to be weak. However, this is not its end, at this time PCI-Express, that is, PCIE appeared, is almost a copy of InfiniBand, its main power point is still inside the chassis, of course, there can also be extended to the transmission media standard outside the box. This makes InfiniBand a complete martyr. Just as Christ is to Christianity.

Until now, the idea of InfiniBand has been absorbed by many new technologies, such as using TCP/IP for remote memory access, or RDMA, although its protocol stack is solidified on dedicated hardware. Nowadays, the separate server chassis has become very crowded. The other side of super fierce server virtualization is that multiple servers are used as one. At that time, the idea of InfiniBand was too precocious.

Shed tears for InfiniBand. But wait a minute, it has not completely disappeared, maybe it can wait until the day of its sublimation and transformation, which is worth looking forward to.

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