The rNOS enables the network to self-discover, self-configure and self-heal.
The Rockport Network Operating System (rNOS) is software at the core of the Rockport Switchless Network and runs on the Network Card, fully offloaded from the compute cores and server operating system. The Rockport Switchless Network is a distributed, highly reliable, high-performance interconnect providing pre-wired supercomputer topologies through a standard plug-and-play Ethernet interface. Rethinking network switches creates an opportunity to leverage direct interconnect topologies that provide a connectivity mesh in which every network endpoint can efficiently forward traffic to every other endpoint. Removing the switch was crucial to achieve significant performance advantages in an environmentally and commercially sustainable way.” “We made it our mission to get data from a source to a destination faster than other technologies. Over the years, this complexity has forced organizations to make tradeoffs when it comes to performance at scale, so we decided to make it simpler,” said Doug Carwardine, CEO and co-founder, Rockport Networks. “Rockport was founded based on the fact that switching, and networking in general, is extremely complicated. No longer are compute and storage resources starving for data, and researchers have more predictability regarding workload completion time. By eliminating layers of switches, the Rockport Switchless Network also significantly frees up rack space to be better used by compute and storage, as well as creating savings in associated power, cooling, and administrative overhead. The Rockport Switchless Network distributes the network switching function to endpoint devices, where these devices (nodes) become the network.