With ClearPath Forward™ technology, a “system” and a “fabric” are synonymous. A fabric is a computing environment in which applications can run in multiple operating environments or on multiple enterprise partition platforms or on both simultaneously. All platforms are interconnected by a high-speed InfiniBand Interconnect and Ethernet. All the devices and environments in the fabric function as a single entity and are managed by the Fabric Manager. In this way, all of the components in the fabric appear as a single system.

Contrarily, “system” is not synonymous with “platform” (nor with its synonyms “Intel platform” and “enterprise partition platform”). A platform is a single physical computer. A system (fabric) almost always consists of at least two platforms.