How can you move data without utilizing much of the most expensive part of your server? Kevin Deierling, VP of marketing at Mellanox Technologies, has the answer … RoCE (pronounced Rocky), an RDMA over Converged Ethernet mechanism. Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media, spoke to Deierling during VMworld 2015 to discuss industry trends, as well as uncover the developments at Mellanox as it seeks to revolutionize networking speeds.

Moving data – no easy task

“Moving data is hard,” according to Deierling, who said that when Siri makes a search, it involves very little data transmitting between your phone and the hyperscaled environment. But, instead, there’s a great deal more data that is transmitted internally at the data center to send the correct information to your phone. Deierling explained that Mellanox has a distinct advantage as an end-to-end producer of Ethernet and InfiniBand transmission methods.

Ethernet vs. Infiniband

Ethernet is quickly becoming the standard in many areas, and this has been an industry trend over the last several years. This is exemplified by the cost differential between 10 gigabit and 25 gigabit Ethernet becoming smaller and smaller and the greater adoption in data centers. Mellanox has also seen a considerable increase in growth in its end-to-end Ethernet solutions, which is further indicative of the trend — important because it has roughly 85% of the market share for end-to-end networking hardware, according to Deierling.

RoCE

Deierling explained that Microsoft performed speed tests of its 100 gigabit Ethernet and was able to achieve 95- to 96-gigabit Ethernet connections. However, it could only achieve less than half of this without Mellanox’s “secret sauce.” More interestingly, it became entirely CPU-intensive, but with RoCE, data movement used little if any of the CPU, allowing data to move quickly and the CPU be utilized for what it was meant for: applications.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of VMworld 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE