For the edge layer, you can use the IBM Switch (8831-S52), which is a Mellanox sourced  Ethernet switch. It provides 48x 1 GbE RJ45 + 4x 1/10 GbE SFP+ ports. For more information about IBM and Mellanox joint solutions, see IBM and Mellanox  Solutions. InfiniBand is the predominant interconnect technology in the HPC market. InfiniBand has  many characteristics that make it ideal for HPC: The following section illustrates how to design an HPC cluster by using a Mellanox InfiniBand  interconnect solution. There are several common topologies for an InfiniBand fabric. Here are some of those  topologies: Other topologies also exist, such as dragonfly and hypercube. This section focuses on fat  tree, which has optimized performance and scalability. The most widely used topology in HPC clusters is the fat-tree topology. This topology typically  enables the best performance at a large scale when configured as a  non-blocking  network.  Where over-subscription of the network is tolerable, it is possible to configure the cluster in a  blocking configuration. A fat-tree cluster typically uses the same bandwidth for all links, and in most cases it uses the  same number of ports in all of the switches. 44  IBM High-Performance Computing Insights with IBM Power System AC922 Clustered Solution  4.6.2 Fat tree topology GLYPH<SM590000> 2D/3D torus  GLYPH<SM590000> 2D/3D mesh  GLYPH<SM590000> Fat tree  A multi-root tree. This is the most popular topology. Each node is connected to four or six other nodes: positive, negative, X axis, and Y axis. The X, Y, and Z ends of the 2D or 3D mashes are  wrapped around  and connected to the  first node. 4.6.1 InfiniBand network topologies GLYPH<SM590000> Support for multiple topologies GLYPH<SM590000> Multi-pathing  GLYPH<SM590000> Centralized management GLYPH<SM590000> QoS  GLYPH<SM590000> A flat Layer 2 that scales out to thousands of end points GLYPH<SM590000> Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) GLYPH<SM590000> Low latency and high throughput 4.6 InfiniBand network