RoCE – RDMA over Converged Ethernet – is a standard released by the IBTA standardization body to define a new RDMA protocol over Ethernet. With the emergence of lossless Ethernet, RoCE uses InfiniBand’s efficient transport to provide the platform for deploying RDMA technology in mainstream data centers over 10GigE, 40GigE and beyond.
IT managers looking to run RDMA applications in an Ethernet infrastructure can expect to see application performance, efficiency, and cost and power savings that come from the reduction in application latency. RoCE communications can be as low as 1/10th that of other standards-based solutions. RoCE provides the best of both worlds: the familiarity and ubiquity of Ethernet combined with the features and efficiencies of InfiniBand.
What is RDMA?
Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) is the remote memory management capability that allows server-to-server data movement directly between application memory without any CPU involvement. RDMA has been shown to deliver value propositions that are not available through any other communications standards, including low latency, improved resource utilization, flexible resource allocation, scalability and unified fabric.
More information on RoCE is available in this fact sheet.
RoCE Resources:
- Storage at a Distance; Using RoCE as a WAN Transport
Paul Grun, System Fabric Works, inc. - TIBCO, Arista Networks, Dell, and Mellanox Technologies Team Up to Provide Financial Markets With Extreme Low-Latency Messaging Solution, April 19, 2011, press release
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