[Beowulf] Gigabit Ethernet vs Myrinet

[Mahmoud Saleh]

Folks,

Reading a couple of comparison tables regarding latency of different NIC 
protocols, I noticed that many solutions suggest to use Myrinet style 
NIC due to its low latency, namely around 8usec for I/O intensive 
cluster jobs. I was wondering if Gigabit Ethernet does the same.

Suppose that Maximum packet size in GE is 1500 bytes and the minimum is 
aroud 100 bytes. This translates to an average of 800 bytes or 6400 
bits. In Gigabit Ethernet that would cause a delay of 6400/10^9 sec  or 
6.4usec for packet assembly, which is in the same order as Myrinet. 

Is this justification correct? If so, how wise is it to use Gigabit 
Ethernet for an I/O intensive cluster?

 

Regards,
--
Mahmoud

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