very high bandwidth, low latency manner?

[Steffen Persvold]

On Fri, 12 Apr 2002, Iwao Makino wrote:

> At 5:29 +0200 12.04.2002, Steffen Persvold wrote:
> >On Thu, 11 Apr 2002, Craig Tierney wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>  I talked to a guy at SC2002 from Quadrics and he said
> >>  that list pricing on a Quadrics network was about $3500
> >>  per node when you are in the 100s of nodes and up.
> >>  The price includes the cards, cables, switches,
> >>  etc.  This doesn't include any sort of discount that you
> >>  might get.  Myrinet is about $2000 for an equivelent
> >>  network at list price.   Dolphin/SCI falls around $2245 list
> >>  per node (if the system is > 144 nodes and you have to get
> >>  the 3d card).
> >>
> >>
> >
> >This is list prices for the cards only, right ? What about the switches
> >needed. AFAIK Quadrics and Myrinet both need switches, SCI don't (which
> >makes the total system cost a bit lower doesn't it ?).
>
> As said on above,  QsNet is per node price including all.
> Do does Myrinet, so SCI/Dolphin and Myrinet is about equal.
>

Yes, sorry I missed that statement :)

> SCI has good idea of not using switches, but on the other hand, it is
> little more complex to connect.
>

True, but if one of your Myrinet switches breaks down you loose 64 nodes
in a 256 node system (standard "CLOS" configuration). I don't know the
MBTF for Myrinet switches, but I would expect it to be rather high
(redundant power supplies ?).

Please don't misunderstand me, I find the Myrinet interconnect very
interesting and also competitive with SCI both from a technological point
of view and wrt. pricing. The only thing this list is lacking is some head
to head performance comparisons of the different interconnects e.g some
NAS benchmarks and maybe also PMB.

Regards,
-- 
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