[Beowulf] Has DDR IB gone the way of the Dodo?

Greg Lindahl lindahl at pbm.com
Wed Oct 1 13:03:38 PDT 2008


On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 01:59:05PM -0400, Prentice Bisbal wrote:

> I'm sure you're right. It's my understanding that IB is a
> well-documented standard, so all IB cables should be created equally,
> but you know vendors, they'll say that their cables are more equal than
> others and refuse support if we're not using all Cisco kit.

Then buy from an IB vendor that isn't silly like that. QLogic and
Voltaire are choices. Is Cisco still re-selling QLogic switches?

Joe wrote:

> > Cisco does appear to be transitioning to *other* technologies.  Again,
> > they aren't the only IB provider out there (seems such a shame, gobbling
> > up TopSpin and then effectively discarding them).

Apparently the main attraction of TopSpin was their virtualization
software. Cisco, of course, supports all the major technologies, so it
can be hard to tell if they really are transitioning to something
else. At a minimum Cisco will want to sell gateways for all
non-Ethernet technologies. After TopSpin was bought, Cisco continued
to sell gateways developed by TopSpin, but sold rebranded QLogic DDR
switches.

-- greg




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