Over at The Register, Timothy Prickett Morgan writes that networking chip and switch maker Mellanox Technologies is ramping up its efforts to play in the software-defined networking (SDN) world. With the new SwitchX-2 chips, the company will create its own OpenFlow controller and work to ensure that its switches work well with controllers from other vendors. The company is also rolling out a new switch ASIC that has been tweaked to support SDN features.
In addition, Mellanox is well used to Ethernet stealing all of the good ideas in InfiniBand. In fact, Mellanox has spent the last several years converging its networking ASICs and switches so they can support either InfiniBand and Ethernet protocols, so adding an OpenFlow control freak for its switches is just the next thing on the to-do list. But before that happens, Mellanox is tweaking its ASIC chip, adding new features to make the SwitchX-2 better able to support SDN capabilities, and other tweaks to cope with traffic congestion compared to the earlier SwitchX chips launched in April 2011 and shipped in products shortly thereafter.
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