Programming the Infiniband Network Architecture for High Performance Message Passing Systems

The InfiniBand Architecture provides availability, reliability, scalability, and performance for server I/O and inter-server communication. The InfiniBand specification not only describes the physical interconnect and the highlevel management functions but also a wide range of functions from simple unreliable communication to network partitioning, with many options. The specification defines line protocols for message passing as a collection of proto verbs. This paper discusses various programming options that available to benefit from the capabilities of InfiniBand Network Architecture. An analysis is presented of the various strategies and programming models that would be enabled and/or enhanced to benefit from the InfiniBand infrastructure, for message passing systems. Conclusions are offered about benefits, trends, and further opportunities for low-level InfiniBand programming