InfiniBand Everywhere—Sky Computers has so much confidence in InfiniBand that its next generation of systems will use InfiniBand on the backplane. The new systems will be based on IBM's InfiniBand 4X Host Channel Adapter (HCA). The technology is designed to replace existing interconnects like Sky Computers' SkyChannel, a proprietary, parallel switched interconnect. Local InfiniBand clusters will handle four processors with systems growing to more than 256 processors. Systems will utilize in-band configuration and error management. Sky Computers promises extensive Linux support on this platform. www.skycomputers.com
InfiniBand Gets Real In 2002—The InfiniBand 1.0 specification will be a year old in June, just as the floodgates for shipping InfiniBand products begin to open. To date, InfiniBand products have been limited to chips and evaluation systems. Companies such as QLogic (www.qlogic.com), InfiniSwitch (www.infiniswitch.com), JNI Corp. (www.jni.com), and Mellonax Technologies (www.mellonax.com) will deliver InfiniBand switch and router support.
Channel Conflict—From Vieo Inc. (www.vieo.com), the Channel Abstraction Layer (CAL) and Lane15 Software's (www.lane15.com) Channel Interface application programming interfaces (APIs) appear to address the same problem—interfacing InfiniBand applications with InfiniBand hardware. The conflict arises because the InfiniBand specification spells out verb (actions that can be performed) definitions but leaves the API up to the vendors. Pick your winner.