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InfiniBand for HP BladeSystem c-Class - questions & answers
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Infiniband for HP BladeSystem c-Class
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QuickSpecs
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» Overview

» Specifications

» Key Benefits

 Questions & Answers
High bandwidth, low latency interconnect, ideal for scale-out high performance computing clusters.

Questions
General
1. What are the key benefits of InfiniBand option for BladeSystem c-Class?
2. What options are available for InfiniBand products for BladeSystem c-Class?
3. How many ports are available on the InfiniBand HCA, and how many ports are on the switch module?
4. What performance is expected using the InfiniBand option on the HP BladeSystem c-Class?
System support
1. What server blades are supported?
2. What server operating systems are supported by the mezzanine HCA?
3. How are InfiniBand Subnet Manager services provided?

Answers

General
Q1. What are the key benefits of InfiniBand option for BladeSystem c-Class?
A1. InfiniBand option provides a high performance interconnect option for scale-out cluster solutions:
  • high bandwidth (up to 40 gigabits per second signaling rate in each direction)
  • low latency (as low as 1.2 microseconds MPI ping-pong)
Q2. What options are available for InfiniBand products for BladeSystem c-Class?
A2. 4X QDR and DDR InfiniBand product options are available.
Q3. How many ports are available on the InfiniBand HCA, and how many ports are on the switch module?
A3. All InfiniBand 4X QDR mezzanine HCAs are dual-port cards. Depending on the server blade models, some configuration rules may apply which may result in only one port being connected to the enclosure mid-plane. Please refer to server blades specification for more details.
InfiniBand blade switches for c-Class are double-wide and have 16 downlink ports to connect up to 16 server blades, and 16 QSFP uplink ports for inter-switch links.
Q4. What performance is expected using the InfiniBand option on the HP BladeSystem c-Class?
A4. 4X QDR InfiniBand is capable of supporting up to 40Gbps per port, 4X DDR InfiniBand is capable for supporting up to 20Gbps per port.
System support
Q1. What server blades are supported?
A1. QDR InfiniBand is supported on G6 blades with Intel® Xeon® processors, and DDR InfiniBand is supported on G1 and G5 blades (see Quickspecs for the list of server blades).
Q2. What server operating systems are supported by the mezzanine HCA?
A2. RedHat Enterprise Linux, SuSE Linux and Microsoft Windows HPC server 2008 are supported.
Q3. How are InfiniBand Subnet Manager services provided?
A3. The subnet manager functionality can be provided by either a rack-mount InfiniBand switch with an embedded fabric manager (also known as internally managed switch) or host-based subnet manager software on a server, or a management module for the QLogic switch blade .
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