Intel® Omni-path Architecture: Enabling Scalable, High Performance Fabrics

The Intel® Omni-Path Architecture (Intel® OPA) is designed to enable a broad class of computations requiring scalable, tightly coupled CPU, memory, and storage resources. Integration between devices in the Intel® OPA family and Intel® CPUs enable improvements in system level packaging and network efficiency. When coupled with the new user-focused open standard APIs developed by the OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) Open Fabrics Initiative (OFI), host fabric interfaces (HFIs) and switches in the Intel® OPA family are optimized to provide low latency, high bandwidth, and high message rate. Intel® OPA provides important innovations to enable a multi-generation, scalable fabric, including: link layer reliability, extended fabric addressing, and optimizations for high core count CPUs. Datacenter needs are also a core focus for Intel® OPA, which includes: link level traffic flow optimization to minimize datacenter jitter for high priority packets, robust partitioning support, quality of service support, and a centralized fabric management system. Basic performance metrics from first generation HFI and switch implementations demonstrate the potential of the new fabric architecture.