Intel ships Infiniband products

Intel has begun shipping samples of InfiniBand silicon and software products designed to eliminate bottlenecks in connections between storage devices and computers.

The InfiniBand architecture is technology that simplifies and accelerates server-to-server connections and links to other server-related systems such as remote storage and networking devices. The products will be used with future IA-32 and upcoming Itanium-based server platforms. Chips based on the InfiniBand technology will be released later this year and actual systems are expected late next year. Philip Brace, director of product marketing for Intel's Enterprise Platform Group, said: "In the internet server space, the ability to scale capacity and improve response time are two key competitive advantages, which InfiniBand will supply. InfiniBand fabrics will deliver to the industry a significant increase in available I/O bandwidth." Brace also said the new components would help make InfiniBand cheap enough for low-end systems. Intel said it has provided samples to OEMs such as Compaq and IBM, switch vendors such as QLogic and Crossroads, and storage vendors such as Adaptec and LSI Storage Systems. Intel is one of seven founding companies of the InfiniBand Trade Association, which includes Compaq, IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems. More than 200 companies have joined the InfiniBand Trade Association since its launch in 1999.