Beowulf with Gigabit Ethernet

[Alberto Ramos]

  Hi all. Im new to this world, but here in one university of Madrid, we are
planning to construct a beowulf for lattice QCD numerical simulations.

  We are thinking in 8-16 dual Athlon MP processors based in the new Tyan
MPX mainboard. We have a problem with the comunication. Myrinet is very
expensive for us, and we are thinking in Gigabit over cooper, but we dont
know if this has some problems with latencies. In other words, Do you think
that the improvement from fast Ethernet to Gigabit over cooper Ethernet is
good enougth?

  Also we dont know very well what the latencies of gigabit over cooper are
compared with fast ethernet and myrinet, maybe some of us can help us.

  Thanks to all.
  
  Alberto.