PLX Technology Joins OpenFabrics Alliance
PLX Technology, Inc. today announced its membership and active participation in the OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA), an organization committed to enabling efficient computing with the highest network bandwidth and lowest end-to-end latencies for Linux distributions and Microsoft Windows Server operating systems.
OFA develops, tests, licenses, supports, and distributes the open source software package known as OpenFabrics Software (OFS) for high-performance networking applications that demand low latency and high scalability. OFS enables efficient computing through the support of remote direct memory access (RDMA). RDMA allows computers to read from and write to each other's application memory directly, eliminating the need to copy the information to intermediate buffers, thus removing a large burden from system CPUs which substantially reduces latency and increases network utilization.
The PLX vision is to extend OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) compatibility to native PCIe-based platforms, thus leveraging the huge installed base of RDMA-enabled software to run without bridging to intermediate protocols. Transport independence means that users can utilize the same OpenFabrics RDMA, kernel bypass the application programming interface (API), and run their applications agnostically over PCIe, InfiniBand, iWARP or RoCE.
"PLX is well aligned with the OpenFabrics Alliance and currently developing compliant PCI Express-based solutions featuring RDMA and other functions to enable PCI Express to act as a fabric within data center racks," said Mani Subramaniyan, principal architect, system software, PLX. "The core goal is to develop products that greatly reduce energy costs while vastly increasing performance, and our engagement with OFA is a step toward achieving that goal."
