Tuning buffer size in InfiniBand to guarantee QoS

Abstract

InfiniBand (IBA) is a new industry-standard architecture both for I/O server and interprocessor communication. IBA employs a switched point-to-point network, instead of using a shared bus. IBA is being developed by the InfiniBandSM Trade Association to provide present and future server systems with the required levels of reliability, availability, performance, scalability, and quality of service (QoS). In previous papers we have proposed an effective strategy for configuring the IBA networks to provide users with the required levels of QoS. This strategy is based on the proper configuration of the mechanisms IBA carries to support QoS. In this paper, we determine the minimum virtual lines' buffer size required to guarantee QoS to the applications. © Springer-Verlag 2004.