Leading Market Research Firm’s Report Highlights Increased Shipment Growth Rate for InfiniBand HCAs and Switch Ports, Stronger Than Expected DDR Adoption, and Predicts Similar Adoption for QDR
STORAGE NETWORKING WORLD, ORLANDO, FL. – April 8, 2008 – The InfiniBandSM Trade Association (IBTA) today announced that according to updated research from IDC, high-performance computing (HPC), scale-out database environments, shared virtualized I/O, and increasing demands from financial applications are propelling worldwide InfiniBand shipments and adoption rates. In its recent refresh of the “Worldwide InfiniBand 2007-2011 Forecast,” IDC increased the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for host channel adapter (HCA) revenue to 35% up from the 29.3% as predicted in 2007, with revenue reaching $279.7 million in 2011 up from $ 224.73 million from a 2007 prediction, and shipment CAGR to 51.5%, with 991,878 HCAs shipping in 2011 an increase from the 935,572 predicted in 2007. The CAGR for InfiniBand switch revenue is 47.2%, up by two percentage points from 2007 with revenue growing to $656.3 million in 2011 from $612.2 million as predicted in 2007, and shipment CAGR to 54.5%, with 1,561,543 switch ports shipping in 20111 previously set at 1,469,319 in 2007.
In the report, which has been updated since its original May 2007 release (Worldwide InfiniBand 2007-2011 Forecast Doc #206902), IDC increased the adoption and shipment rate of 20Gb/s DDR InfiniBand ports, as the market demand for DDR outpaced their original forecasts. IDC also expects the adoption rate of 40Gb/s QDR InfiniBand to be similar to the rate of DDR adoption.
“The demand for increased bandwidth continues to grow, and the requirement to meet these needs without increasing the complexity or cost is still a major factor, and the establishment of InfiniBand as a standards-based architecture is a key for future customer adoption,” said Stephen Josselyn, research director, Global Enterprise Server Solutions at IDC. “We have increased our forecast view incrementally based on the increased adoption of InfiniBand in enterprise datacenters and further penetration into the TOP500 supercomputing sites.”
InfiniBand continues to strengthen its leadership as the high-speed interconnect of choice for high-performance clusters. According to the 30th edition of the TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful computers, 125 supercomputers (25% of the list) are connected with InfiniBand, and the total number of InfiniBand connected CPU cores on the list has grown from 137K in 2006 to 340K in 2007 (148% yearly growth) which highlights the increasing demand for InfiniBand to maximize computing resources and performance.
Success in the HPC market is driving adoption into corporate data centers. Dozens of enterprise customers – primarily in banking, managed hosting services, Web 2.0, insurance services and healthcare – are now using InfiniBand interconnects in a variety of applications such as Monte Carlo analysis, oil and gas exploration, vehicle modeling, semiconductor design, utility computing, and with clustered database solutions like Oracle 10g RAC and IBM DB2.
InfiniBand is also being deployed in virtualized environments to cost effectively scale virtual machines by delivering higher LAN and SAN throughputs for virtual machines. Higher I/O bandwidth and I/O consolidation in virtualized environments are critical needs, further exacerbated by deployment of multi-core CPUs and I/O real estate
constraints driven by green data center initiatives. By consolidating I/O into a “single wire,” InfiniBand solutions can help IT managers deploy more power-efficient blade servers (that lack I/O real estate) and save significantly by eliminating the use of multiple I/O adapters and related cabling complexity.
More than 35 different server manufacturers around the globe now offer InfiniBand interconnects to their end user customers. Additionally, all of the major systems vendors have incorporated InfiniBand options on their blade server platforms.
The IBTA is exhibiting at the Hotel Rosen Shingle Creek in the Sebastian ballroom, booth number 911. The Expo hours are Tuesday, April 8 from 12:15-3:00 p.m. and 5:40- 8:40 p.m. and Wednesday, April 9 from 12:30-3:00 p.m.
About the InfiniBand Trade Association
The InfiniBand Trade Association was founded in 1999 and is chartered with maintaining and furthering the InfiniBand specification. The IBTA is led by a distinguished steering committee that includes Cisco, IBM, Intel, Mellanox, QLogic, Sun and Voltaire. Other members of the IBTA represent leading enterprise IT vendors who are actively contributing to the advancement of the InfiniBand specification. The IBTA actively markets and promotes InfiniBand from an industry perspective through public relations engagements and unites the industry through IBTA-sponsored developer conferences and workshops. For more information on the IBTA, visit: www.infinibandta.org
1. Source: IDC, “Worldwide InfiniBand 2007-2011 Forecast Update,” Doc #211375, March 2008
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