What networking feature is responsible for reducing inter-node communication latency during distributed training?

InfiniBand with RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) is specifically designed to facilitate high-performance computing and reduce inter-node communication latency, making it particularly advantageous during distributed training processes. InfiniBand allows multiple nodes in a network to communicate quickly and efficiently by bypassing the operating system and enabling direct access to memory from one node to another. This drastically minimizes the delays typically associated with data transfer between nodes, enhancing the overall speed and efficiency of distributed training tasks.

Using RDMA, data can be sent directly from the memory of one computer to the memory of another without involving the CPU or the OS in every transaction. This results in lower latency and higher throughput, making it ideal for environments that require rapid data exchange and synchronization, such as machine learning training where large datasets are processed concurrently across multiple nodes.

The other options, while relevant to networking, do not provide the same level of performance enhancement for distributed training. For instance, VLAN segmentation aids in managing network traffic and improving security but does not directly reduce latency. Network Address Translation (NAT) is commonly used for routing and translating IP addresses but does not address the inherent latency issues in node-to-node communication. TCP/IP over Ethernet, although foundational for most networking, is not optimized for low-lat