Hi Henry,
To overcome the performance limitations of today’s HPC systems we need an intelligent interconnect. The interconnect becomes a co-processor, offloading the CPU, increasing data center efficiency.
Intel Omni-Path is a no-offload and proprietary network product. The same old Pathscale “Infini-Path” (and QLogic “True-Scale”) product, running at higher network speed. Does not support RDMA, HPC offloads, cloud offloads or any other network offloads. It requires the CPU to handle all network operations, results in lower CPU efficiency (high overhead) ....
So who is Omni-Path good for? Intel– it will require users to buy more CPUs to try and overcome lower data center efficiency.
And why does Intel push inferior network technology? Intel tries to show value versus their CPU competitors (ARM, Power, etc.)
Mellanox InfiniBand delivers leading performance over Omni-Path promises: higher message rate, lower latency, lower power consumption, and estimated 2X higher system performance and efficiency.
Mellanox EDR solution is robust, working, and delivering scalable performance. Omni-Path is not.
Thanks,
Ophir.