[Beowulf] interconnect and compiler ?

[Nifty Tom Mitchell]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 06:02:03PM +0100, Kilian CAVALOTTI wrote:
> On Thursday 29 January 2009 17:44:27 Toon Knapen wrote:
> > In your experience, why is IB mainly Melanox and not verari or voltaire?
> 
> Because Mellanox is pretty much the only manufacturer of IB silicon. IB 
> vendors (Qlogic, Voltaire, etc) all sell products using Mellanox chips.

Close.
QLogic bought two IB companies.
	Pathscale and Silverstorm
		http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/servers/2006/0220server1.html
		http://www.internetnews.com/storage/article.php/3635946

	Silverstorm had build a rich IB product line based on Mellanox silicon.
		most of those are still available.  Newer Mellanox silicon based designs
		are not available from QLogic, I am sure for competitive reasons.
	Pathscale had build their own IB silicon for their own HCA's, 
		silicon design efforts now in QL continue to move forward for both HCA 
		and switch silicon.

My observation is that the Silverstorm view was fast networking
(HPN) and the Pathscale perspective was laser dialed in on HPC.
QLogic has a storage oriented, history including FC.

At this point QLogic has moved their IB silicon designs forward
and closed many of the acquisition gaps between HPC, HPN and storage.

Today all the IB vendor solutions are near equals with enough differences to
make planning and benchmarking fun.   Make your sales contacts work for you.

Of interest IB standards have just too many pages and mixed vendor agendas.
It will may take a couple of additional silicon turns for silicon (and software) 
to catch up to all the dreams put down by the authors of the IB standard.  
Much of it is here today... just not not all bits from all vendors.


-- 

	Regards,
	T o m   M i t c h e l l