[Beowulf] 2.6.11 is out; with InfiBand support

[Greg Lindahl]

On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 08:58:33AM -0600, Don Holmgren wrote:

> I was just quoted quantity 2 PCI-X HCA's (4x 2 port Mellanox) by a
> reseller for $655 each.  Last Fall we purchased a large quantity of
> PCI-E HCA's for considerably less than that unit price.
> 
> Supposedly the "memory free" PCI-E HCA's that use host memory, rather
> than on-board sram, should move prices towards $100 sometime this
> year - we'll see (landed on motherboard pricing at ~ $70, see
>    http://www.mellanox.com/news/press/pr_030105.html)

You're mixing retail price with wholesale price. The $69 price is
apparently quantity 10,000, for just the chip, and the card that
is inexpensive will be PCIe 4X, which hurts performance.

I hear that today's street price for Mellanox-based cards is ~$600 in
cluster-sized quantities, which matches what you report.

> Like other high performance network gear, it's tough to get
> accurate pricing information without going out and getting quotes.

One nice thing about Myricom is that their prices have always been on
the web -- all you need to know in addition is your discount.

-- greg