Bitwrangler
Never Underestimate Ethernet
Woven systems announced HPL benchmark results on par with DDR IB. While I'll be the first to argue, with all due respect to top500.org, that all the world is not about HPL, I am convinced that one should never count the ethernet world out when it comes to price/performance metrics. I've been saying for a while that when they get 10Gbit ethernet NICs down to $30 a copy and 10 Gbit ethernet port costs down then they will give IB a serious run for the HPC network of choice (in volume). At the high end of the top500 there will always be special interconnects, but for the bottom 400,000 clusters, ethernet will be just fine thank you. You can find more about the Woven announcement here.
Posted at 09:34AM Feb 20, 2008 in Sun | Comments[0]