Mellanox Technologies confirmed that it is now shipping its RDMA over Ethernet (RoCE) 25Gbps ConnectX network adapters for deployment in Alibaba Infrastructure Services’ production network.
RDMA technology provides Remote Direct Memory Access from the memory of one host to the memory of another host without involving the operating system and CPU, therefore boosting network and host performance with low latency, low CPU load and high bandwidth.
Mellanox cites the following advantages for its ConnectX network adapters:
- Sub 1us point-to-point latency
- Close to zero CPU utilization at full wire speed
- Scalability to thousands of nodes
- Outstanding performance on all types of fabrics – from lossless to lossy
- Ease of deployment through automation
“High performance network transport technology is critical for Alibaba to achieve the throughput and latency required by our services. We are excited to collaborate with Mellanox to deploy its RoCE technology into our infrastructure.” said Dennis Cai, Chief Architect of Network Infrastructure under Alibaba Infrastructure Services.
“Mellanox has pioneered RoCE technology and is now shipping its 7th generation of RoCE capable ConnectX network adapters,” said Amir Prescher, senior vice president of business development at Mellanox Technologies. “Alibaba’s successful large-scale deployment of ConnectX RoCE adapters confirms again that RoCE is a proven technology to accelerate the most demanding workloads in a cost-effective manner. We are thrilled to work with Alibaba to achieve this.”