Ted H. Kim's Weblog

Friday January 25, 2008

Sun Downloads for InfiniBand

Recently, some parts of the Sun download site were reorganized. Now, it is a bit easier to find some InfiniBand items, since they are now in the InfiniBand section under the Hardware Drivers category.

Currently, we have some Linux stuff there as well as these add-ons to the base InfiniBand support in Solaris:

• Solaris InfiniBand Updates 1 - which I talk more about here

• SCSI RDMA Protocol (SRP) Driver

• Firmware Flash Update Tool - to update your HCA firmware when necessary

Of course, this is not the complete list of downloads with InfiniBand content. I don't totally understand the classification system, but I guess it depends on whether they are primarily InfiniBand or more generic than that.

So for example, there is HPC ClusterTools 7.1 which Sun's MPI product which also has InfiniBand support and can be downloaded. But it's in a different section. I think there are some others like this, but you get the idea.

Oh yeah, did I mention that all the downloads I mentioned above are all FREE.

Technorati Tags: InfiniBand

(2008-01-25 13:34:53.0) Permalink

Monday January 14, 2008

OpenSolaris and iWARP

Not much has been posted yet, but I should point out that there is now an OpenSolaris project for iWARP.

Look here: RDMA Offload Framework (ROF)

Technorati Tags: iWARP

(2008-01-14 13:18:58.0) Permalink

OpenSolaris and IB

Just wanted to point out some OpenSolaris projects for InfiniBand ...

IP on InfiniBand - Of course, IPonIB is already in Solaris, but this OpenSolaris project is about futures.

iSCSI Extensions for RDMA (iSER) - This project includes both initiator and target.

NFS over RDMA - Of course, this is both client and server.

OpenFabrics User Verbs - This project is a port of the OpenFabric's userland verb interface to Solaris. Once this is done, many apps which run on OFED could then be ported to run on Solaris.

Technorati Tags: InfiniBand

(2008-01-14 13:10:04.0) Permalink

Friday January 11, 2008

Solaris InfiniBand Updates 1

Like many other bloggers, I have to simply own up to the reality that blogging is bursty. Often it's a particular event rather than a lifestyle habit that motivates posting.

Well, this time I am motivated by the release of Solaris InfiniBand Updates 1. If you want cut to the chase, then get it here. But if you have no idea what this is about, then read on ...

This product is a FREE software download containing additional software for Solaris 10 InfiniBand. To run it, you need Solaris 10 8 / 07 (Update 4). From the name, you can probably guess that it will not be the only release in this series. You may wonder if this software is also going back into the other Solaris release trains. The answer is YES. It is our intention to eventually fold all this stuff back into the mainstream Solaris releases. So it is going to end up there. But for now, to satisfy the demands of our rapidly growing InfiniBand market in both HPC and the Enterprise, it's coming out NOW to minimize delay in getting to the market.

So what's in this release? Let me be the first to admit the name of the product is something only an accountant would like. The name really does not tell you what's in it. This product contains support for MemFree InfiniBand HCAs based on the Mellanox MT25204 and MT25208 chips (these PCI IDs: 15b3,5e8d   15b3,6274   15b3,6828). For the non-IB crowd, "MemFree" means that the HCA uses host memory instead of memory on the I/O adapter card for the HCA state (so it's LESS EXPENSIVE). So in particular the Sun 10-Port 4x DDR IB NEM for the SunBlade 8000/8000P (option X1289A-Z) is supported (see here, link to a drawing of the NEM). Of course, there are also numerous third party cards also using these Mellanox chips. Note that this software is only for the "MemFree" cards, other Sun software should be used for the cards (and Express Modules) with on-board memory.

In other Sun InfiniBand news, I should also point out that ClusterTools 7.1 (Sun's MPI based on OpenMPI 1.2.4) has been released. See this article.

Technorati Tags: InfiniBand

(2008-01-11 10:39:21.0) Permalink Comments [2]