Abstract
Scalability of Cluster-Computers utilizing Gigabit-Ethernet as an interconnect is limited by the unavailability of scalable switches that provide full bisectional bandwidth. Clos’ idea of connecting small crossbar-switches to a large, non-blocking crossbar – wide-spread in the field of high-performance networks – is not applicable in a straight-forward manner to Ethernet fabrics. This paper presents techniques necessary to implement such large crossbar-switches based on available Gigabit-Ethernet technology. We point out the ability to build Gigabit-Ethernet crossbar switches of up to 1152 ports providing full bisectional bandwidth. The cost of our configuration is at about €125 per port, with an observed latency of less than 10 μsec. We were able to find a bi-directional point-to-point throughput of 210 MB/s using the ParaStation Cluster middle-ware [2].
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References
IEEE standard 802.3z, IEEE standard 802.3ab
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© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Eicker, N., Lippert, T. (2006). Scalable Ethernet Clos-Switches. In: Nagel, W.E., Walter, W.V., Lehner, W. (eds) Euro-Par 2006 Parallel Processing. Euro-Par 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4128. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11823285_92
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11823285_92
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-37783-2
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