[Beowulf] FPGA storage accelerator

[Lux, Jim (337K)]

ATM… I remember it well-  it was going to be: “100 Mbps + to the desktop!” so you don’t have rely on an ISDN PRI or a 10Mbps ethernet.
The next step past ISDN (“It still doesn’t network”) although I had a BRI to my apartment, then house, for several years.  We had ISDN phones at JPL for a number of years, and now we’re all Cisco VOIP phones – heck, the astronauts on ISS call home on a unmodified Cisco VOIP phone. I guess Cisco was more motivated to deliver a “solve everyone’s problems” solution than the fractious baby bells.

I remember well ATM’s short packets (so you don’t need echo suppressors within continental France) – compared to 100Mbps Ethernet Jumbo frames that became pervasive, and now we’re GigE to the desktop.

Silicon is wonderful – you can make adaptive equalizers that figure out and compensate for all the impedance discontinuities getting from chip to board to connector to cable etc.  If you had asked me, in 1985 as an RF /DSP kind of guy, will we send many Gbps over twisted pair for a few dollars/port  I would have said that would be quite a feat.


From: Beowulf <beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org> on behalf of "beowulf at beowulf.org" <beowulf at beowulf.org>
Reply-To: John Hearns <hearnsj at googlemail.com>
Date: Wednesday, June 6, 2018 at 10:32 PM
To: "beowulf at beowulf.org" <beowulf at beowulf.org>
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] FPGA storage accelerator

> It’s so interesting to look at what was old being new again though.  Lovely insight as always Joe!

Indeed. Ideas always come around again in computing.

My aphorism - always follow the herd. Look at what everyone is buying an implementing.
Don't delve too deeply into the technical minutae of a particular technology which takes your interest.
For if you don't follow the herd it will trample you.
(Speakign as someone who was an expert in ATM networking, long since left lying flattened on the plains)










On 7 June 2018 at 03:58, James Cuff <jcuff at nextplatform.com<mailto:jcuff at nextplatform.com>> wrote:
On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 9:43 PM Joe Landman <joe.landman at gmail.com<mailto:joe.landman at gmail.com>> wrote:
Ha! "Then maybe, just maybe, perhaps 640 PB ought to be enough. Maybe."

Thanks for spotting that.  I really am trying.  Peebees  :-)

It’s so interesting to look at what was old being new again though.  Lovely insight as always Joe!

Back in 2005 or so, we had these little USB connected FPGA

Yep!


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--
Dr. James Cuff
The Next Platform
https://www.nextplatform.com/author/jamescuff/
https://linkedin.com/in/jamesdotcuff
https://twitter.com/jamesdotcuff

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