Combined Cable and Device Integrators’ List by InfiniBand Trade Association

The InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA), an organization dedicated to maintaining and furthering the IB and RoCE specifications, announced the availability of its latest InfiniBand Combined Cable and Device Integrators’ List and RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) Interoperability List.

Held October 2017 at the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), IBTA Plugfest 32 featured new member vendors, cables, devices and testing capabilities, making it a successful compliance and interoperability event.

The independent third-party compliance and interoperability program ensures that each cable and device tested successfully meets end user needs and expectations of IB and RoCE technology.

Customers ranging from data centers and research facilities to universities and government labs leverage these results when determining which products to use when designing or upgrading their systems. Fabric design is an important and costly business decision, making the IB Integrators’ List and the RoCE Interoperability List crucial elements when building systems and ensuring that all equipment will operate seamlessly. The independent validation provided by the IBTA Compliance and Interoperability program is critical to the advancement of RDMA technology and the industry.

Highlights from Plugfest 32:

• Records for RoCE Interoperability Testing
  • Four major device vendors and seven prominent cable vendors are now participating in the RoCE interoperability testing progra
  • 21 Ethernet devices and over 60 Ethernet cables registered for the event, which were run through 30 different scenarios at speeds of 10, 25, 40, 50 and 100GbE speeds
• Cutting-Edge Testing Equipment and Capabilities
  • Work on new SFI Transport tester at Plugfest 32 will allow 25 additional tests for Plugfest 33 in April 2018
  • New test equipment and application software enabled testing of IB HDR 200Gb/s copper cables and the development of new HDR 200Gb/s testing suites for implementation at Plugfest 33

“The IBTA Plugfest is widely acknowledged as the most demanding and effective compliance and interoperability program in the industry, which creates a robust and reliable ecosystem of IB and RoCE solutions that end users can depend on,” said Rupert Dance, chair of the IBTA Compliance and Interoperability Working Group (CIWG). “Moreover, each IBTA Plugfest provides our members – both cable and device vendors – with a neutral venue that is also attended by leading RDMA test equipment vendors who supply cutting-edge equipment for advanced compliance and interoperability testing. This results in a unique opportunity only offered by the IBTA for its members to test the latest IB and Ethernet-based products in many different scenarios, debug in real-time and resolve any issues uncovered in the process.”

The IBTA Plugfest is essential to members and creates a path to develop products that are compliant to the IB and RoCE specifications and also interoperable within the larger ecosystem. Each product that completes compliance and interoperability testing is compiled into the resulting IB Integrators’ List and RoCE Interoperability List. These lists are technical resources that provide benefits to all end users deploying RDMA-based fabrics.

Vendors that contributed test equipment to IBTA Plugfest 32 include Ace Unitech, Anritsu, Keysight Technologies, Molex, Software Forge, TE Connectivity, Tektronix and Wilder Technologies.

Following sources provide additional information
about the IBTA Integrators’ List Program:
• Methods of Implementation (MOI)
• Integrators’ List Policy and Testing Procedures
• Archives of past IB Integrators’ Lists and RoCE Interoperability Lists

IBTA Plugfest 33 will be held April 9-20, 2018 at UNH-IOL.

The IBTA is led by a steering committee that includes Broadcom, Cray, HPE, IBM, Intel, Mellanox Technologies, Microsoft, Oracle and QLogic. Other members of the IBTA represent enterprise IT vendors who are contributing to the advancement of the IB and RoCE specifications.