HPC Interconnect, Interconnect, High-speed Interconnect

A high-speed network capable of passing data around an HPC system at the speeds necessary to facilitate effective use of things like MPI and accelerator cards around an HPC cluster. While consumer network speeds are typically somewhere around 1 gigabit/second, HPC network speeds in an HPC cluster typically start at 100 gigabits/second and increase from there. HPC interconnects can run at speeds of 100, 200, 400, and very soon, up to 800 gigabits/second, and can provide exotic connections like direct GPU-storage communication in some configurations. There are a number of different interconnect products out there providing these speeds from several vendors. The interconnect is one of the three components of the HPC triangle.