OpenFabrics Alliance
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| Formation | June 2004 |
|---|---|
| Type | Non-profit organization |
| Purpose | Industry trade group |
| Website | http://www.openfabrics.org/ |
The OpenFabrics Alliance is a non-profit organization that promotes remote direct memory access (RDMA) switched fabric technologies for server and storage connectivity. These high-speed data-transport technologies are used in high-performance computing facilities, in research and various industries.
The OpenFabrics Alliance aims to develop open-source software that supports the three major RDMA fabric technologies: InfiniBand, RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) and iWARP. The software includes two packages, one that runs on Linux and FreeBSD and one that runs on Microsoft Windows. The alliance worked with two large Linux distributors—Novell and Red Hat—as well as Microsoft on compatibility with their operating systems.
Founded in June 2004 as the OpenIB Alliance, the organization originally developed an InfiniBand software stack for Linux. Initial funding for the Alliance was provided by the United States Department of Energy. The alliance released the first version of the OFED (OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution) in 2005.
In 2005 the OpenIB Alliance announced support for Microsoft Windows. In 2006, the organization again expanded its charter to include support for iWARP, which is a transport technology that competes with InfiniBand. At that time the alliance changed its name to the OpenFabrics Alliance. Subsequent releases have added support for iWARP and Windows.
In 2011, OFED stack was ported to FreeBSD and included in FreeBSD 9.
A community of developers from hardware manufacturers, software vendors, system integrators, government agencies and academia continue[update] to work on OFED. The OpenFabrics Alliance provides architectures, software repositories, interoperability tests, bug databases, workshops, and BSD- and GPL-licensed code to facilitate development.
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