ENGINEERING
Mellanox Proposes Contribution of 10 GbE Switch Spec to the Open Compute Project
Completes end-to-end 10GbE/40GbE interconnect solution for OCP
Mellanox Technologies is offering its SwitchX-2 Top-of-Rack switch as a proposed contribution to the Open Compute Project. The SwitchX-2 switch dramatically improves power consumption, latency and density, enabling larger, efficient and more cost-effective data center designs. By open sourcing the designs for the switch, Mellanox is helping drive a faster pace of innovation and a great focus on efficiency and scale in data center technologies.
The SwitchX-2 Top-of-Rack switch supports 48 10GbE SFP+ ports and 12 40GbE QSFP+ ports, enabling non-blocking connectivity within the OCP’s Open Rack, or alternatively, enabling 60 10GbE server ports when using QSFP+ to SFP+ breakout cables to increase rack efficiency for less bandwidth demanding applications. The new switch is also the first that supports Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) over x86 processors, which will enable new levels of scalability and performance.
“Mellanox, with its large portfolio of high-performance interconnect solutions, has been an important contributor to and supporter of the Open Compute Project,” said Najam Ahmad, director of network engineering at Facebook and project lead for the OCP network working group. “Mellanox’s proposed open switch design and software model will help the Open Compute community achieve its vision for true openness and a faster pace of innovation in network technologies.”
“Since its inception, Mellanox has been a leading contributor to the Open Compute Project delivering our ConnectX-3 EN 10GbE server adapters and cables to the OCP ecosystem,” said Kevin Deierling, vice president of marketing, Mellanox Technologies. “As a leader in end-to-end data center interconnect solutions, we’re pleased to extend our support and ongoing contribution to OCP Network Project by providing our SwitchX-2 Top-of-Rack 10GbE switches – the lowest power device in the market. We believe that the OCP standards provide best practices that will help more companies to build efficient solutions for the emerging web applications.”
In May 2013, the Open Compute Project launched a new network project focused on developing an OS-agnostic top-of-the-rack switch. Accompanied by an open source boot loader defined by ONIE, any switch vendor can port its networking Operating System to the open switch specifications being developed by the OCP community. The software interfaces to the switching hardware is defined by Open Ethernet Switching (OES) API, a generic and standard interface for fast path hardware acceleration. Along with the switching API, Mellanox is collaborating with the OCP community to define unified and open drivers for the OCP switch hardware components. Mellanox shares the OCP network project’s vision by joining forces with key companies to bring ONIE over PPC and x86, and OES and OEP packages to the OCP framework.