Mellanox Technologies Ltd., the leading provider of InfiniBand silicon, together with optical communications products provider Alvesta, announced the industry's first interoperability demonstration of 10-Gigabit per second (Gbps) InfiniBand over a single optical cable.
The two companies successfully demonstrated 4X InfiniBand packets traversing through a pair of Alvesta's 3100 optical transceivers, 150 meters of fiber optic cable, and Mellanox's InfiniScale switch silicon, officials said.
"There is a strong need to extend InfiniBand beyond the reach of copper," said Robert Nalesnik, VP of marketing at Alvesta. "Most InfiniBand rack-to-rack connections will require 10-gigabit data rates. Data center managers prefer optical connections for additional reach and to insure switching gear is adequately isolated and protected."
The InfiniBand Architecture specifies both 10-gigabit electrical and optical connections. The 10-gigabit optical link is designated IB-4X-SX, which is specified as four full-duplex, 2.5 Gbps links operating at an 850 nanometer wavelength over a single parallel fiber ribbon. The 4X fiber ribbon is terminated with industry standard MPO optical connectors. A maximum distance of 125 meters is specified when using 50/125 micron multimode fiber with a bandwidth product of 500 MHz*km.
The Alvesta 3100 is the first optical transceiver in the market conforming to the IB-4X-SX specification. The 3100 operates up to 300 meters, which more than doubles the InfiniBand specified distance requirement for multimode fiber and extends InfiniBand distance beyond the 17 meter 4X copper connector limit. These longer distances give data center managers more flexibility in data center design and equipment placement.
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