Infiniband is the data transfer protocol used in most data center to interconnect computers and storage units. This protocol offers a bandwidth up to 40 Gbits/s and was used in 2004 by VirginiaTech in its G5 cluster.
With the dramatic increase of needs and numbers of data and supercomputing centers, always more powerful, there is a bright future for this protocol. So, it is not really surprising to learn that Intel, one of the main driving forces of Inifiniband, has acquired QLogic, the specialist of Infiniband products.
With this acquisition, Intel wants to strengthen its position and know-how for interconnecting servers, and expects to offer by 2018, supercomputer with the exaflops performance level... in other words about 100 times more than current top notch supercomputers...
