InfiniSwitch Corporation

InfiniSwitch Corporation was a developer of InfiniBand switching solutions tailored for the data center market. The company commenced operations in the fall of 2000, established by a team with extensive collective experience in designing and delivering switch and system solutions at major technology firms including Compaq, Digital Equipment, IBM, and Lucent. This deep industry background provided a strong foundation for tackling the data bottlenecks prevalent in data centers at the time.

The company focused on addressing the limitations of existing input/output (I/O) architectures, which struggled to keep pace with advancements in computer processing speeds. InfiniSwitch developed integrated hardware and software switching technology that formed the core of a data center's architecture. Its product line included hardware such as the 4X Host Channel Adapter (HCA) and a 24-port 4X leaf switch, alongside software management tools like a Command Line Interface (CLI) and the InfiniSwitch manager for fabric management. The business model centered on the sale of these specialized hardware and software products, targeting enterprise clients and high-performance computing environments that required scalable and efficient communication between computers, networks, and storage devices. By leveraging the InfiniBand architecture, InfiniSwitch's solutions aimed to eliminate the CPU overhead associated with traditional TCP/IP networks.

A significant milestone for the company was its election to the InfiniBand Trade Association Steering Committee in 2003, joining industry giants like Dell, HP, IBM, and Intel. This position allowed InfiniSwitch to play a key role in shaping the future of InfiniBand technology. The company successfully secured nearly $30 million in venture funding from investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Columbia Capital, Flagship Ventures, Moore Capital Management, and TL Ventures to fuel its growth and product development. In March 2003, InfiniSwitch also acquired Lane15 Software.

Keywords: InfiniBand switching, data center solutions, high-performance computing, cluster fabric, network interconnects, switch hardware, fabric management software, venture capital, data center architecture, I/O architecture, Host Channel Adapter, leaf switch, network scalability, enterprise data centers, low-latency networking, server interconnect, storage networking, TCP/IP offload, system area network, data communication