Re: 10-Gigabit ethernet questions

Dan,

Dan Strahs wrote:
> Hi:
> 
> I've been thinking about the 10-gigabit products Myricom is developing and 
> I have questions that I was hoping might be answerable.
> 
> 1) Myricom is selling the cards, but what switches are these cards for?

Myri-10G NICs are dual-protocol NICs.

They can be used in 10-Gigabit Ethernet mode with your choice of any
commercially available 10-Gigabit Ethernet switch.

Or, they can be used in 10-Gigabit Myrinet mode with a Myri-10G switch.

Myri-10G switches have been displayed at trade shows including SC05
(see http://www.myri.com/news/051121/) and LinuxWorld Boston, but are
not yet listed on the web.

> 
> 2) The software to support these cards currently is released as a beta 
> test. Is the software stable for long-term performance?

Myri10GE (Myri-10G in 10-Gigabit Ethernet mode) software is currently
available in beta release and the official 1.0 regular release is
expected within a few weeks.

MX-10G (Myri-10G in 10-Gigabit Myrinet mode) software is currently
available in beta release.

There are several Myri-10G customer installations using 10G Myrinet
with Myri-10G switches and a beta version of MX-10G.  These
installations -- up to 128 nodes -- are seeing good stability and
exceptional application performance.

> 
> 3) The performance tests were executed using two nodes, each with two 
> dual-core Opterons. Have any performance tests been performed in any 
> topology other than two nodes hooked directly to each other?

Yes.  We are testing Myri-10G NICs in a variety of PCI-Express
motherboards with a number of commercially available 10-Gigabit Ethernet
switches.

Early MX-10G performance results can be found on the following webpage
(http://www.myri.com/opteron/).  Full Pallas MPI Benchmark results for
MX-10G will be available soon on the Myricom Performance webpages.

Feel free to contact us at [email protected] if you have further questions.

Susan

-- 
Susan Blackford
Member of Technical Staff
Myricom Inc.