[Bioclusters] OS X and NFS

[M. Michael Barmada]

On 7/15/05 9:05 AM, Tim Cutts <tjrc at sanger.ac.uk> wrote:

> On 14 Jul 2005, at 11:24 pm, David Kramer wrote:
> 
>> Respectfully, and at the risk of sounding, ridiculously naive --
>> why not
>> consider upgrading the I/O switching technology to Myrinet or
>> Infiniband for
>> higher-bandwidth and ultra-low latency, before buying more servers?
> 
> Depends on the application.  Gigabit ethernet is reasonable
> bandwidth, it's just not very good latency.  So if you do a lot of
> properly parallel MPI stuff where fast job turnaround is important,
> then the low latency interconnect might be a winner.  But for those
> of us (and Sanger is an example) where throughput is paramount, and
> individual job turnaround less so, the embarrassingly parallel single-
> threaded job approach is king; in such scenarios low latency
> interconnects cost a lot of money for relatively little gain, and
> increasing node count gives a better return.


So now its my turn - respectfully (and at the risk of sounding ridiculously
naïve myself) - can you use the low latency interconnects (myrinet or
Infiniband) for TCP or UDP bound services (like NFS or AFP)? My
understanding was that they were only for things like MPI...?

-- 
M. Michael Barmada, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Human Genetics
Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh

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