HPC Cluster Computing Using iWARP
High Performance Computing Cluster architectures have relied on multiple networking technologies for control, inter-processor communications (IPC) and storage. iWARP (RDMA over Ethernet) is a robust, proven low latency solution for high performance computing, backed by many of the leading 10Gb Ethernet adapter companies. Chelsio's low-latency 10Gb Ethernet solution features full protocol-offload technology and exceeds InfiniBand in application performance and delivers the highest throughput and low latency needed for high-performance computing applications. Typical High Performance Computing Applications
- Geological analysis for oil and gas exploration
- Bioscience and genome mapping
- Nanotechnology research and development
- Financial analysis
- Fluid dynamics
- DoD testing and simulation
- Weather forecasting
- Data mining / predictive optimization
iWARP (Internet Wide Area RDMA Protocol) can also be called RDMA over Ethernet (or RDMA over CEE (Converged Enhanced Ethernet) depending on whether the Ethernet infrastructure is CEE capable). It is a low-latency Ethernet solution for high performance computing using RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) protocol over TCP/IP, and is standardized through the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force).
iWARP frees up memory bandwidth and valuable CPU cycles to allow focused processing of HPC applications, by taking advantage of an embedded TCP offload engine (TOE) and RDMA capabilities for direct application access and kernel bypass. With a number of fabrics converging towards Ethernet as a unified wire, iWARP stands out in providing the lowest cost clustering solution by allowing users to leverage their installed Ethernet networks in the datacenter.
The Securities Technology Analysis Center measured the performance of the Chelsio 10GbE adapter using the Reuters Market Data System (RMDS6) benchmark suite, and the results highlighted that Chelsio provided the lowest mean latency and the lowest standard deviation of latency ever reported with RDMS using 10Gb Ethernet, 1Gb Ethernet, or InfiniBand. The complete benchmarks are available at the link on the right.
Chelsio’s next generation iWARP-offload adapters will reduce the benchmark latency to 2us in 2010 and to less than 1us in 2011. It is expected therefore that applications using Chelsio’s next generation iWARP technology show similar performance to QDR-IB, while benefiting from all other aspects of a Unified Wire (iSCSI, FCoE, TOE, Virtualization, etc.).
