From: lindahl@pbm.com (Greg Lindahl) Newsgroups: comp.parallel Subject: Re: Myrinet vs Gigabit ethernet Date: 12 Nov 1998 05:15:30 GMT Organization: a guest of Shadow Island Games Approved: bigrigg@cs.cmu.edu Message-Id: <72dqti$ftk$1@encore.ece.cmu.edu> Originator: bigrigg@ece.cmu.edu Aakash Kambuj writes: > Im currently working on building a distributed computing system for a > project. I would like to know if I should use Myrinet or gigabit > ethernet. Myrinet seems quite popular, however, several people have > recommended gigabit ethernet to me. Any particular pros/cons of either I > should know about? Benchmarks will show a huge difference in performance, even though are supposedly the same speed. The problem is that you can't afford to go through the kernel at gigabit speeds. Once gigabit ethernet adapters get a CPU on the card and a user-level interface (such as U-Net or VIA), they will perform similarly to Myrinet. But you still won't be able to buy a 256-port gigabit ethernet switch with a bisection bandwidth of 128 gigabits. Size matters. Anyone got a guess as to when someone else will be able to build large, cost-effective gigabit switches? -- greg -- Articles to bigrigg+parallel@cs.cmu.edu (Admin: bigrigg@cs.cmu.edu) Archive: http://www.hensa.ac.uk/parallel/internet/usenet/comp.parallel