Mellanox Technologies has introduced SwitchX-2, the next generation of its switch silicon optimised for Software Defined Networking (SDN). Based on Mellanox's Virtual Protocol Interconnect (VPI) technology which allows for simultaneous connection to InfiniBand or Ethernet with integrated gateways to legacy data centre and storage systems, SwitchX-2 utilises RDMA-based 56Gb/s Ethernet and InfiniBand. The company states that it is the world's fastest, most scalable SDN switch with 4Tb/s switching capacity, the industry's lowest power consumption, extremely low 170ns latency, hardware-based L2/L3 congestion management for highest efficiency and hardware-based data error correction.
Advanced capabilities include remote configurable routing tables, lossless and congestion free networks, efficient control planes, and SDN-optimised software interfaces. SwitchX-2 enables IT managers to program and centralise their server and storage interconnect management and reduce operational expenses by completely virtualising their data centre network.
