Since 1999, the IBTA has worked to further the InfiniBand specification in order to provide the IT industry with an advanced fabric architecture that transmits large amounts of data between data centers around the globe. This year, the IBTA is celebrating 15 years of growth and success.

In its mission to unite the IT industry, the IBTA has welcomed an array of distinguished members including Cray, Microsoft, Oracle and QLogic. The IBTA now boasts over 50 member companies all dedicated to furthering the InfiniBand specification.

The continued growth of the IBTA reflects the IT industry’s dedication to the advancement of InfiniBand. Many IBTA member companies are developing products incorporating InfiniBand technology, including FDR, which has proven to be the fastest growing generation of InfiniBand technology: FDR adoption grew 76 percent year over year from 80 systems in 2013 to 141 systems in 2014. Most recently, the Top500 list announced that 225 of the world’s most powerful computers chose InfiniBand as their interconnect device in 2014.

2014 also marked the release of RoCEv2. RoCEv2 is an extension of the original RoCE specification announced in 2010 that brought benefits of Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) I/O architecture to Ethernet-based networks. The updated specification addresses the needs of today’s evolving enterprise data centers by enabling routing across Layer 3 networks. By extending RoCE to allow Layer 3 routing, the specification can provide better traffic isolation and enables hyperscale data center deployments.

Below is a timeline that further illustrates the IBTA’s advancements over the past 15 years that have helped to bring InfiniBand technology to the forefront of the interconnect industry.

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