Fabric Switch

Bringing the interconnectivity of supercomputing to ultra-efficient processors.

An embedded network fabric switch provides the links necessary to interconnect 10's, 100's or even 1000's of EnergyCore SoCs - without the cost, complexity or cabled-mess of traditional rack-based deployments. Similar to a traditional layer-2 network switch, but enhanced with more advanced power and routing features, the EnergyCore Fabric Switch embedded within each SoC delivers:

  • High-bandwidth, low-latency links that deliver up to 10Gb of bandwidth with latencies less than 200ns per hop
  • Adaptive link speed minimizes energy consumption by auto-negotiating link speeds between EnergyCore server nodes within the same fabric
  • Topology agnostic deployments - up to 4096 nodes - allow system designers to build clusters based on requirements for a variety of workloads

Implemented within the EnergyCore ECX-1000 processors, each SoC contains five fabric links that operate between 1-10Gbps per channel, and supports a variety of fabric topologies such as meshes, grids, butterfly trees, and more. The fabric interconnects are built on industry standard XAUI interfaces, and fully supports native IP (TCP/UDP) as well as lower level protocols. With node-to-node latency under 200 nanoseconds, network round trip times are considerably faster compared to a traditional top of rack switch.

Lower costs, increase performance, and reduce energy consumption.

As an integral component within the EnergyCore architecture, the integrated fabric switch:

  • Lowers costs by removing the need for external switching equipment and cabling.
  • Delivers higher performance with 10Gb interconnects across an entire cluster, at no additional cost.
  • Reduces energy consumption by eliminating or significantly reducing the number of external switch ports required.
  • Enables ultra-dense system designs by offering an alternative to traditional network infrastructures and removing the need for physical Ethernet cables and ports.
  • Provides network flexibility by supporting various topologies focused on performance throughput, availability, or a balance of both.

Maximizing software compatibility by transparently exposing the fabric switch as Ethernet MACs while leveraging standard Linux drivers. Network communication stacks in your existing applications will "just work".