IBM To Resell Topspin InfiniBand Switches

IBM and Topspin plan to show combined solutions at next week's LinuxWorld conference in New York.

Under the agreement, IBM will sell Topspin's current 4X (10Gbps) InfiniBand switches, and plans to resell to partners its 12X (30Gbps) switches when they become available. Those will be used for high-performance computing and database clustering across all of IBM's server lines, as well as in networking and storage applications, said Tom Bradicich, distinguished engineer and director of architecture technology for IBM's xSeries servers.

IBM decided to work with Mountain View, Calif.-based Topspin rather than develop its own InfiniBand technology because Topspin's products are already certified for IBM's storage and DB2 products, Bradicich said. IBM server certification is expected by the end of January,

Topspin also has on-demand computing and utility computing strategies in line with those of IBM, Bradicich said.

Despite early hype about the possibilities of InfiniBand, and the subsequent letdown in terms of actual products and technologies that are available, IBM remains committed to InfiniBand because the open industry standard delivers speeds of 10Gbps now and 30Gbps in the future, said Bradicich. He added that InfiniBand is the only connectivity solution with RDMA (remote direct memory addressing), which increases networking performance by allowing information to be placed directly in a remote location without the need for an intermediate copy.

Stu Aaron, vice president of marketing and business development for Topspin, said the growing interest in InfiniBand is being enhanced by the acceptance by vendors such as IBM and Oracle, both of which have embraced the technology in their database applications.