Recently while talking with an IT operations manager for a major Web retailer, I was enlightened on the importance of reducing latency in web-based applications. He explained that they were challenged to find a way to reduce the response time to their web customers. They investigated this for quite some time before discovering that the major issue seemed to be the time it takes to initiate a TCP transaction between their app servers and database servers. Subsequently their search focused on finding the best interconnect fabric to minimize this time.
Well, they found it in InfiniBand. With its 1 microsecond latency between servers, this web retailer saw tremendous opportunity to improve response time to its customers. In their subsequent proof of concept testing, they found that indeed they could reduce latency between their app servers and database servers. Resulting improvement to their customers is over 30%. This is a huge advantage in their highly competitive market. I would tell you who they are but they would probably shoot me.
More and more enterprise data centers are finding that low latency, high-performance interconnects, like InfiniBand, can improve their customer-facing systems and their resulting web business.
If you want to hear more, or try it for yourself, send me an email.
Thanks,
Wayne Augsburger
Vice President of Business Development
wayne@mellanox.com
