InfiniBand and PCI Express: Competing and/or Complementary Technologies?

InfiniBand and PCI Express (PCIe) have been, and sometimes still are, pitted as competing technologies.  The reality is that they were each conceived within and initially developed by groups that had, and still have, somewhat different objectives.  Understanding these different objectives helps put in perspective these technologies tend to complement each other from a large systems point of view.

 This presentation will start by discussing the two main user groups for these technologies and then take a look at the design objectives of each group to better understand the key decision making factors in selecting one over the other.  Next we will take a look at the similarities and the differences between the two specifications including protocol stack comparison, addressing, topologies, and switches. 
 
By the time we are done you will have a good understanding of where each technologies  shines and how,  when the two are combined,  from a systems standpoint the capability of the system is greater than the sum of its parts.