[Beowulf] Energy Budget for plug ins & accessories

[Ed Karns]

At the risk of creating confusion and otherwise wasting a lot of time 
...

1) There are several relatively new PCI plug in cards that may be using 
significant amounts of power and thus possibly contribute to 
operational errors or even failures in clustered systems.

2) Modern PCI plug in cards, generally, can be restrained from using 
excess power by simple accessory management.
  (Example: most modern FireWire (IEEE 1394a & b) and USB (1.1 & 2.0) 
PCI plug in cards do not use excessive power from the motherboards' 
buss ... unless one or more accessories attached to the cards draw 
significant power directly from the FireWire or USB bus (cable) 
connections.)

3) The identity of any problematic PCI plug in cards is in question.

So, I would recommend that a list be made with accompanying evaluation 
of possible problematic PCI (and PCMCIA and other) plug in accessory 
cards. The evaluations might include any "field fix" suggestions ...

What say you?

Ed Karns
FireWireStuff.com