InfiniBand Trade Association Launches the RoCE Initiative to Improve Data Delivery
The rate in which new data is being created and consumed is pushing the limitations of existing infrastructures. To cope with this demand, data centers and networks are looking for new technologies to deliver performance and efficiency gains to cloud, storage, virtualization and hyper-converged infrastructures. As more people access their applications, entertainment, shopping and other services from their mobile device, the job is getting harder. The InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) has announced it is adding to the knowledge base in this segment with the launch of the RoCE Initiative to advance Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) over converged Ethernet solutions and promote RoCE awareness.
According to the IBTA, the RoCE initiative was established so CIOs, data center architects and solution engineers can improve application performance and data center productivity.
By applying a transport protocol in the network interface card (NIC) hardware, RDMA is able to implement and support zero-copy networking. Zero-copy networking makes it possible to read data directly from the main memory of one computer and write that data directly to the main memory of another computer.
With RDMA, faster movements of data between servers and storage now requires less CPU. By using RDMA, RoCE can improve infrastructure solutions for hyper-converged data centers and virtualized environments. With this system in place, networks will be more efficient because they will have lower latency and improved CPU efficiency.
The technology brings greater network utilization by transporting data across Layer 2 and Layer 3 networks for better traffic isolation and hyperscale data center deployments.
“The RoCE Initiative will be the leading source for information on RDMA over Ethernet solutions. The RoCE Initiative expands our potential audience and will enable us to deliver solution information and resources to those requiring the highest performing Ethernet networks,” said Barry Barnet, co-chair, IBTA Steering Committee.
The RoCE Initiative promotes awareness, technical education and reference solutions for high performance Ethernet topologies in traditional and cloud-based data centers. Technology providers in RoCE are continuously contributing to the initiative with the goal of advancing the solution so more people can use it.
Edited by Maurice Nagle
