As Beowulf-style clusters have proliferated, many computational scientists have discovered that, although clusters provide adequate CPU performance for most applications, more finely-grained models are often limited by the performance of the network that interconnects nodes. While the network is typically Fast Ethernet (100 Mb/s) or Gigabit Ethernet (1.0 Gb/s), it’s still not fast enough to run applications originally developed for shared memory parallel systems or commercial memory systems featuring high performance, custom-designed switched interconnects.
As Beowulf-style clusters have proliferated, many computational scientists have discovered that, although clusters provide adequate CPU performance for most applications, more finely-grained models are often limited by the performance of the network that interconnects nodes. While the network is typically Fast Ethernet (100 Mb/s) or Gigabit Ethernet (1.0 Gb/s), it’s still not fast enough to run applications originally developed for shared memory parallel systems or commercial memory systems featuring high performance, custom-designed switched interconnects.
Such applications have stimulated the market for scalable networks that provide high bandwidth and low latency on commodity clusters. (Bandwidth is the throughput rate of a data channel, while latency is the time it takes to open the channel and initiate the data transfer.) These custom networks — often adding 50% or more to the per-node cost of Linux clusters — are not commodity items, and some people claim that, as a result, a cluster sporting one of these sexy networks can not be called a Beowulf. Religious arguments aside, many researchers consider these high performance interconnects a necessity for their computational clusters.
High Wire Performance
Three of the most popular high performance cluster networks are Myrinet from Myricom, Inc. (http://www.myricom.com/), Scalable Coherent Interface (SCI) from Dolphin (http://www.dolphinics.com/), and QsNet from Quadrics (http://www.quadrics.com/). All three of these networks utilize standard PCI host interfaces, support larger installations (thousands of nodes), require software drivers and/or optimized MPI (Message Passing Interface) implementations to make use of the hardware.
MYRINET
Myrinet (ANSI/VITA 26-1998,…
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