(Press Release) Adaptec, Broadcom, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft Corp. and Network Appliance have announced the Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) Consortium, an independent consortium formed to develop the architectural specifications necessary to implement products that provide RDMA over TCP/IP networks, including Ethernet- based networks. These specifications will help organizations meet increasing demands for networking bandwidth and speed that are currently growing faster than the processing power and memory bandwidth of the compute nodes that process networking traffic.
RDMA technology enables removal of data copy operations and reduction in latencies by allowing one computer to directly place information in another computer's memory with minimal demands on memory bus bandwidth and CPU processing overhead, while preserving memory protection semantics. Today, communications over TCP/IP typically require copy operations, which add latency and consume significant CPU and memory resources.
RDMA over TCP/IP defines the interoperable specifications to support RDMA operations over standard TCP/IP networks. The RDMA Consortium will create specifications for a complete RDMA solution, which include RDMA, DDP (Direct Data Placement) and framing protocols over TCP/IP.
The RDMA Consortium is complementary to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. The RDMA Consortium member companies and individuals are active participants in the IETF process. In addition, the IETF has recognized the importance of RDMA as a viable network practice and is expected to charter an "RDMA over Internet Protocol Suite" Working Group in the coming months. The RDMA Consortium membership agreement specifies that the Consortium will submit draft specifications to the appropriate IETF working groups for consideration.
