Sun Datacenter Switch 3456

Sun has introduced the world's largest InfiniBand core switch, the Sun Datacenter Switch 3456. The total data throughput for the switch is 110,100 Gbps with a port-to-port latency of 700 nanosecond.

This switch supports up to 24 line cards, each with 48 12X iPass connectors. A single cable can connect one 12x iPass port to three 4x Single Data Rate or Double Data Rate (SDR/DDR) Infiniband connectors through a 12x-to-4x splitter cable.

24 cards per switch
* 48 iPass connectors per card
* 3 IB ports per iPass
= 3,456 connections

The Sun Datacenter Switch 3456 can be used to connect lots of Sun Blade servers together with the new Sun Blade 6000/6048 infiniband switched network express module. Twelve blade servers in a 6048 are each provided with two 4x IB through the Switched NEM (24 IB ports in total). Only eight 12x IB connections/cables to the 3456 switch are needed to provide 24 4x IB ports to 12 blades.