On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 07:46:57AM -0500, Andrew Piskorski wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 04:10:33PM +0000, John Hearns wrote:
> > It is a tad lame to repeat articles from HPCwire here, but I can't help it.
> > New. Shiny. http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/2UTwin2.cfm
>
> So it gets to use all larger 80 mm case fans, while stuffing 4
> dual-socket nodes into one 2u case, neat. Only two tiny little
> screechy fans, in the power supplies.
>
> The "4x InfiniBand controller ports" listed for the 6026TT Server
> seems a bit confusing though. A few of the motherboard options
> include built-in InfiniBand, but only Opteron boards (e.g., the
> H8DMT-IBXF), none of the supported Intel cpu motherboards have that.
>
> What are the pros/cons of the on-motherboard InfiniBand compared to
> using an add-on IB and riser card in the PCI-Express slot?
>
> http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/motherboard/Opteron2000/MCP55/H8DMT-IBXF.cfm
Compare and contrast various IB solutions on a MB the same way you
would older Ethernet solutions. This MB has a Mellanox InfiniHost
MT25204A0-FCC-D for 10Gb/s InfiniBand chip set. Since 20Gb/s Infiniband is
available having this Infiniband on the MB may constrain you to 10Gb/s links.
With 2xQuad core processors this may be less than you would like.
This IB chip set has been well benchmarked. Still, _your_ benchmarks
will tell....
The next question is IB drivers and MPI libs from Super Micro. For this
chip set the kernel.org and/ or Open MPI drivers may be on a par with
vendor drivers. Do watch for firmware version update and compat issues....
In general a landed on motherboard chip set solution can be less expensive
than a MB+card solution. The lack of a PCIe connector and riser can
improve PCIe signal quality. The IB chip set is close to the 4x connector
which is a good thing.
This could be a fine MB...
--
T o m M i t c h e l l
Found me a new hat, now what?
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