Shared memory communications direct on Linux on Z

The shared memory communication (SMC) protocol is an addition to TCP/IP and can be used transparently for shared memory communications.

The SMC can be used for connections through Shared Memory Communications Direct (SMC-D) with ISM devices. Shared Memory Communications through RDMA (SMC-R) with RoCE devices are not supported.

SMC-D is supported in IBM Storage Scale on Linux® on Z. SMC-R is not supported.

The benefits of SMC-D are as follows:
  • Low latency
  • Less CPU usage compared to native TCP/IP

SMC-D can be used for the workloads with large data, high throughput, and many parallel network connections.

For more information about SMC-D, see SMC protocol support.