Design considerations for high-speed internetworking among compute blades within a blade server chassis

The next generation of compute servers is going to be based on clusters of compute blades integrated within a common chassis The integration of advanced networking functions within the chassis promises to simplify the deployment of servers on a large scale by eliminating the need to deploy external inter-network devices on a one-to-one basis (e.g., one or more network ports per server). This paper examines the internetworking requirements for incorporating several very high-speed and redundant communication links on a common midplane for the interconnection of compute blades within the chassis and to the external network infrastructure.