Why HPC Clusters Use InfiniBand: Low Latency and RDMA Explained
High-performance computing (HPC) clusters often deploy InfiniBand alongside standard Ethernet because tightly coupled workloads demand more than just high bandwidth. Applications running across dozens or hundreds of nodes continuously exchange data, making both latency and throughput critical to overall performance. InfiniBand's key advantage lies in Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA), which enables data transfers directly between nodes' memory with minimal CPU and operating system involvement, reducing communication overhead. However, InfiniBand is not the only option — high-speed Ethernet and RoCE, which brings RDMA capabilities to Ethernet, are also used depending on workload requirements. Ultimately, the network is as vital to HPC performance as the CPUs themselves, since powerful processors are ineffective if nodes spend excessive time waiting for data.
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