InfiniBand Trade Association Implementing Optimized Testing and Debugging Procedures

The InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) announced the availability of its April 2017 IB Combined Cable and Device Integrators’ List and RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) Interoperability List.

Held in April of 2017, Plugfest 31 featured updates to IBTA’s testing processes and methodologies, resulting in real-time interactive testing, debugging and validation of new IB and RoCE products. Additionally, Plugfest 31 saw an increase in vendors submitting RoCE capable solutions for interoperability testing as well as in 100Gb IB EDRsproducts being tested for both compliance and interoperability.

Updates to IBTA Plugfest testing procedures include:

• New hardware and software solutions enabling real-time Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) testing

  • • 32 port VNA to test all eight lanes versus 4 port testing of one lane

    • New MATLAB code to allow real-time processing of the 32 ports-parameter files

• Active Time Domain (ATD) testing

  • • Eye Mask and Jitter testing

    • Bit Error Rate (BER) testing

• HDR 200Gb/s testing capabilities

  • • Available in October 2017 at Plugfest 32

“IBTA members are quite excited about the enhancements to our compliance and interoperability testing methodology, which were first initiated at the Plugfest 31,” said Rupert Dance, chair, compliance and interoperability working group (CIWG), IBTA. “The new procedures enable increased onsite participation and validation, allowing attending engineers to perform real-time debugging and interactive troubleshooting of their latest IB and RoCE solutions. This supplements the IBTA’s long-held reputation as having the preeminent and most rigorous compliance and interoperability program in the industry.“

IBTA Plugfest results will now be more rapidly available given the reduction of post processing time, better supporting those developers making critical system deployment decisions.

The IB Integrators’ List is comprised of a variety of IB solutions, including Host Channel Adapters (HCAs), switches, iSCSI extensions for RDMA (iSER) targets, and both active optical and passive copper cables. The RoCE Interoperability List features 10, 25, 40, 50 and 100GbE RNICs and switches. It also includes both active optical and passive copper Ethernet cables using SFP28 and QSFP28 connectors along with hybrid cables, which allow to connect 100GbE QSFP28 switch ports to four 25GbE RNICs using SFP28 connectors. The increase in 100Gb IB EDR and RoCE products submitted for testing highlights continued industry demand for faster networking solutions accelerated by RDMA technology.

Updated twice a year following bi-annual Plugfests, the lists make up the IBTA Integrators’ Program, which is designed to support data center managers, CIOs and other IT decision makers with their planned IB and RoCE deployment in enterprise and HPC systems. The program is founded on testing procedures that establish compliance to the IBTA architecture specifications and real-world interoperability among solutions.

Vendors that contributed test equipment to IBTA Plugfest 31 include Ace Unitech, Anritsu, Keysight Technologies, Molex LLC, Software Forge, Tektronix and Wilder Technologies.

IBTA member companies with solutions featured on the lists include Amphenol FCI, Applied Optoelectronics, Cavium, Finisar, Fujitsu Component Limited, Intel Corp., Jess-Link Products Co., Ltd., Luxshare-ICT, Mellanox Technologies, Molex LLC, NetApp, TE Connectivity and Volex.

Additional information about the IBTA Integrators’ List Program:
Methods of Implementation (MOI)
Integrators’ List Policy and Testing Procedures
Archives of past InfiniBand Integrators’ Lists and RoCE Interoperability Lists