What is InfiniBand and Why is it used in HPC?

According to the top 500 list, more 50% of supercomputer interconnect devices are InfiniBand based and the percentage is growing YOY. Why are most HPC data centers deploying InfiniBand instead of Ethernet or OPA in their network?

Learn more: What Is InfiniBand and Why Is It Used in HPC?

InfiniBand Is Widely Used in Supercomputers and HPC Data Centers

Early in June 2015, InfiniBand consisted of 51.8% in the Top500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, with a 15.8% year-on-year growth.

TOP500 Interconnect Trends, June 2015. Image source: IBTA Home

In the Top500 list in June 2022, InfiniBand networks once again topped the list of supercomputer interconnect devices with absolute numbers and performance advantages, a significant increase from the previous list. Throughout this list, the following three trends can be summarized.

  • Supercomputers based on InfiniBand networks are significantly ahead of other network technologies with 189 systems. InfiniBand-based supercomputers lead the Top 100 systems in particular, with 59 units in the Top 100, and InfiniBand networks have become the standard for performance-conscious supercomputers.
  • NVIDIA GPU and networking products, such as NVIDIA Volta GV100, A100, Mellanox HDR Quantum QM87xx switches and BlueField DPU, are the dominant interconnect in the Top500 systems, with more than two-thirds of the supercomputers using NVIDIA Mellanox networking, and the performance and technology leadership of NVIDIA Mellanox networking has been widely recognized.
  • It is also worth noting that InfiniBand networks are widely used not only in the traditional HPC business, but also in enterprise-class data centers and public clouds. NVIDIA Selene, the number one performance enterprise supercomputer, and Microsoft’s Azure public cloud are both leveraging InfiniBand networks to deliver superb business performance.

Whether it is the evolution of data communication technology, the innovation of Internet technology, or the upgrade of visual presentation, all are thanks to more powerful computing, larger capacity and more secure storage, and more efficient network; InfiniBand network-based cluster architecture solution not only provides higher bandwidth network services, but also reduces the consumption of computing resources by network transmission load and reduces latency and perfectly integrates HPC with data centers.

In the latest Top500 list in Nov. 2022, InfiniBand continued leadership in the Top 500 high-performance computing systems and kept growing. Why are InfiniBand networks so highly valued in the Top500? Its performance benefits play a decisive role.

#hpc #infinband #opa #ethernet #datacenter #highperformancecomputing

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