High Speed Beowulf Cluster using gigabit ethernet

Velocet math at velocet.ca
Tue Feb 19 21:27:51 PST 2002


On Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 04:04:09AM -0500, Velocet's all...
> The addtron site has a module there for download. Its precompiled for
> 2.4.2 (or so it would seem based on the makefile), and some instructions
> for getting it working. A few nice features such as Transmit and Receive
> queue sizing, as well as info for 'jumbo frames' up to 4000 bytes. However,
> thats if you get it working. Anyone using this? Anyone tried to compile the
> module? (I got a few compilation errors relating to asm header files in the
> linux kernel...)

Re the addtron card module:

got a friend with far more module-cum-gcc-kernel-symbol hacking-fu than I
to fix this thing up and it loads fine now.

It makes the ARK and SMC and DLink cards I have on loan also work (probably
same basic driver as all NS83820 but has some Addtron  specific options,
or so the readme with it leads me to believe).

The Addtron card works with it as well - but *ONLY* on the Tyan 2466 board.
It will *NOT* work on the Tyan 2460 board at all, in a 32/33 or 64/33 slot.

I cant see what could be different - I've got identical environments on both
machines. I recompiled virgin 2.4.17 kernels on both. The modules that come
out are slightly different (different machine names? dates of creation?) (its
hard to swap drive between the systems) but loading either works on the 2466
board, and neither works on the 2460.

I've tried known good cards in the 2460 in 32/33 as well as 64/33 slots.
no go.

Anyone have an idea what could be different on the 2460?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More details:

- the addtron cards wont work in the 66/64 slots on the 2466.

- 2 cards work at once with the driver as long as they're in the 4 32/33 slots.

- im getting about 56 MB/s in to the addtron from a 64 bit ARK card 
  and about 13 MB/s (very slow!) out from the addtron to the ark. I havent
  tweaked any of the settings for it, there are a number of them - keep
  in mind the Addtron card is using a different driver.

- the addtron cards do work on the 2466 with the ns83820 driver (as module
  or in kernel). Crude data rate tests give me about the same as the
  dpm.o driver from addtron for outbound data, but about 2x slower for
  inbound (25MB/s).

I will tweak settings and see what I can get out of them in the next days.

Anyone else got NS83820s with some stats? 64 bit vs 32bit? 66Mhz vs 32Mhz?

/kc
-- 
Ken Chase, math at velocet.ca  *  Velocet Communications Inc.  *  Toronto, CANADA 



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