[Bioclusters] Flat Network Neighborhoods

[jfreeman]

Hi Folks,

I was talking to the folks yesterday's BAMCAT
(http://xanadu.mgh.harvard.edu/bambct/) meeting and the cost of switches
came up as a possible problem, so I remembered seeing the Flat Network
Neighborhood (FNN) model used on the computer KLAT2.

See:
http://aggregate.org/KLAT2/

In short they use cheap 8 port switches to connect large numbers of
cluster computers and put two nic cards in each box to handle the
routing.  They wire the network based on the output from a genetic
algorithm which takes the number of nodes, the number of ports in the
switch and the number of nics in the computer and gives out the
switching fabric.

I haven't tried it myself, we have big enough switch at the moment, but
it seemed like an interesting approach.

Good Luck,

Jim