OFED

OFED, short for OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution, is a software stack that provides the drivers, libraries, and utilities needed to deploy InfiniBand and RDMA networking on Linux and other platforms. It is designed to enable low-latency, high-throughput communication across InfiniBand fabrics as well as RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) and, to some extent, iWARP networks. The distribution is maintained by the OpenFabrics Alliance and community contributors, with packaging and integration across various Linux environments.

The core components of OFED include kernel drivers for InfiniBand adapters and related devices, along with user-space libraries such as libibverbs and the RDMA core stack (librdmacm and related utilities). OFED also provides tools for configuring, monitoring, and diagnosing InfiniBand networks, as well as support for high-performance communication used by message-passing interfaces like Open MPI and MVAPICH. By offering a common stack, OFED simplifies deployment of RDMA-enabled networks in data centers, HPC clusters, and other environments requiring fast inter-node data transfer.

Historically, OFED played a central role in standardizing and distributing the InfiniBand/RDMA software stack for Linux. Over time, the ecosystem has evolved with the development of newer components such as rdma-core and vendor-specific driver packages, but OFED components continue to influence how RDMA-enabled systems are deployed and maintained. The stack remains relevant for users seeking a unified, interoperable foundation for InfiniBand and RDMA networking.

See also InfiniBand, RDMA, RoCE, OpenFabrics Alliance.