Cluster via USB

[Donald Becker]

On Fri, 2 Mar 2001, Timm Murray wrote:

> The new standard looks good (512 Gb/s, IIRC),

480Mb/sec, with larger block sizes so the overhead isn't as bad as with
the current version.  Expect to see the first chipset implementations no
sooner than a year from now, with the hardware showing up before then
being developer prototypes.

> but current USB just isn't fast enough for a lot of things...

Yes, it's way too slow.  The effective transfer rate is 6-10Mb/s, with
7Mb/s the typical real-life result.  That's slower than old Ethernet,
which was too slow for typical applications in 1994.

> However, the new standard may give a better price/performance
> ratio then gigabit ethernet or Myrinet, depending on how well
> IP-over-USB scales.
> 
> On a somewhat related note, what about FireWire?

Both USB 2.0 and Firewire have the same problem: the availability of
switches to build large system.  

Donald Becker				becker at scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Second Generation Beowulf Clusters
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993