OpenFabrics

OpenFabrics refers to a software stack that provides high-performance RDMA networking for InfiniBand and RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE and iWARP). It encompasses the OpenFabrics software distribution (OFED) and related user-space libraries and kernel drivers that implement the Verbs API and related interfaces, enabling zero-copy remote memory access and high-throughput messaging across supported networks.

The stack includes kernel device drivers for InfiniBand adapters, user-space libraries such as libibverbs and librdmacm, the rdma-core collection, and middleware components that support connection management and memory registration. Applications rely on the Verbs API to perform RDMA operations; popular MPI implementations integrate with the stack to accelerate communication. The stack supports InfiniBand hardware, RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet) and iWARP, enabling RDMA-capable networking over Ethernet fabric.

OpenFabrics software is widely used in high-performance computing clusters, data centers, and storage environments for low-latency, high-bandwidth communication. It is typically deployed on Linux alongside network adapters from vendors such as Mellanox/NVIDIA, Chelsio, Intel, and Broadcom. The project is governed by the OpenFabrics Alliance and has evolved into the standardized protocol and library set used by many RDMA-enabled systems.