[Beowulf] Re: newbies' dilemma / firewire? (Hahn)

[Patrick Geoffray]

Michael Will wrote:
> Infiniband with DDR is already at 20Gbps over CX4 copper

Over 3 meters cables thick as firehose. 5 meters if you like to play 
with fire.

There is a time when fiber is the right thing to do. However, WDM 
solutions are still expensive, it's much cheaper to use several fibers 
per cable. You can run 12.5 Gbps Ethernet over 200 meters with quad 
fiber cables which are barely more expensive than single fiber cables 
(and much thiner than any other cable used today).

Single fiber for 10GigE uses a 4-way WDM to multiplex in one signal. The 
price premium over a quad fiber transceiver is about $350. It was 
expected that this premium would disappear, but it's not happening and 
that's why the quad fiber cable is being ratified as an official 10GigE 
medium.

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