James A. Kunz

Intel® Omni-path Architecture: Enabling Scalable, High Performance Fabrics

The Intel® Omni-Path Architecture (Intel® OPA) is designed to enable a broad class of computations requiring scalable, tightly coupled CPU, memory, and storage resources. Integration between devices in the Intel® OPA family and Intel® CPUs enable improvements in system level packaging and network efficiency. When coupled with the new user-focused open standard APIs developed by the OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) Open Fabrics Initiative (OFI), host fabric interfaces (HFIs) and switches in the Intel® OPA family are optimized to provide low latency, high bandwidth, and high message rate. Intel® OPA provides important innovations to enable a multi-generation, scalable fabric, including: link layer reliability, extended fabric addressing, and optimizations for high core count CPUs. Datacenter needs are also a core focus for Intel® OPA, which includes: link level traffic flow optimization to minimize datacenter jitter for high priority packets, robust partitioning support, quality of service support, and a centralized fabric management system. Basic performance metrics from first generation HFI and switch implementations demonstrate the potential of the new fabric architecture.

Enabling Scalable High-Performance Systems with the Intel Omni-Path Architecture

The Intel Omni-Path Architecture (Intel OPA) is designed to enable a broad class of computations requiring scalable, tightly coupled CPU, memory, and storage resources. Integration between the Intel OPA family and Intel CPUs enable improvements in system-level packaging and network efficiency. When coupled with the new open standard APIs developed by the OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) Open Fabrics Initiative (OFI), the Intel OPA family is optimized to provide low latency, high bandwidth, and a high message rate. Intel OPA enables a multigeneration, scalable fabric through innovations including link layer reliability, extended fabric addressing, and optimizations for high-core-count CPUs. Intel OPA also provides optimizations to address datacenter needs, including link-level traffic flow optimization, to minimize jitter for high-priority packets, partitioning support, quality-of-service support, and a centralized fabric management system. Basic performance metrics from first-generation host fabric interface and switch implementations demonstrate the new fabric architectures potential.