(iTers News) – Mellanox Technologies, Ltd., a leading supplier of high-performance, end-to-end interconnect solutions for data center servers and storage systems, today announced the availability of its Ethernet Switch Software Development Kit (SDK) Application Programming Interface (API) with full Layer 2 and Layer 3 functionality as an Open Source software platform. The release of the API is a continued step in the Open Ethernet initiative and works in conjunction with Open Compute Project (OCP). The Open SDK API enables the Ethernet community to build open source networking applications and protocols faster and can be a base for a standard Ethernet switch interface.

For years, Ethernet switch vendors have locked down their solutions, providing no choice or flexibility for their users. In the era of cloud computing and Web 2.0 applications, IT managers must control their data center network in order to achieve higher levels of utilization and scalability. Open source trends traditionally focused only on operating systems, standards and applications. Mellanox is building on this initiative and is leading the “Generation of Open Ethernet” to enable the next era of open data centers by expanding open source into the data center infrastructure, and providing capabilities for application developers to create additional software functionalities on top of the network stack.

“By opening the SDK API, we provide our customers with an open interface for integration of their applications and the freedom to optimize the Ethernet switch hardware platforms to their needs,” said Gilad Shainer, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “We encourage other vendors to join the growing community of the Open Ethernet initiative and to agree on a common, standard API for all switches, and for application developers to write network stacks on top of Ethernet switch ICs.”

The Open SDK API code and documentation can be downloaded for free from the Mellanox website or from GitHub. Mellanox will continue to take an active part in the Open Source community by providing further enhancements that facilitate increased development and deployment of this and other projects.