fast blackplanes (was Re: Experience with SMC 8624T L2 switches and nics)

[Patrick Geoffray]

On Thu, 2003-02-27 at 09:59, Richard Walsh wrote:

> Interesting. Is that number the blade-only per port price or does
> that include the switch capable of connecting 128 nodes with some
> expansion capability? 

If I remember well, it's about $75K for 128 port all included. In short,
it's the same switch enclosure than for the Myrinet fabric, but the
switch blade have 8 GigE port on the face. Myrinet is used internally to
transport Ethernet frames, so you can expand it to 8K ports by building
a Clos topology with Myrinet links between the switches (it's a little
bit cheaper because it takes half the number of links between switches
to keep the full bisection). The sweet spot is supposed to be one
enclosure (127 ports).

However, it's a Layer-2 switch, it's not a Layer-3 router. Feedback from
customers was that a Layer-2 switch is all they need to make GigE
clusters.

I don't know exactly when it will ship.

Patrick
-- 

Patrick Geoffray, Phd
Myricom, Inc.
http://www.myri.com