- QsNet
QsNet is a high speed interconnect designed by
Quadrics used inHPC clusters, particularly Linux Beowulf Clusters. Although it can be used with TCP/IP; like SCI,Myrinet andInfiniband it is usually used with a communicationAPI such as MPI or SHMEM called from a parallel program.The interconnect consists of a PCI card in each compute node and one or more dedicated switch chassis. These are connected with a copper cables. Within the switch chassis are a number of line cards that carry "Elite" switch
ASIC s. These are internally linked to form afat tree topology. Like other interconnects such asMyrinet very large systems can be built by using multiple switch chassis arranged as spine (top-level) and leaf (node-level) switches. Such systems are usually called federated networks.As of 2003 , there are two generations of QsNet. The older QsNetI was launched in 1998 and used PCI 66-64 cards that had 'elan3' Custom ASIC on them. These gave an MPI bandwidth of around 350 Mbyte/s unidirectional with 5us latency.QsNet II was launched in 2003. It usedPCI-X 133 MHz cards that carry 'elan4' ASICs. These give an MPI bandwidth of 912 Mbyte/s and MPI latency starting from 1.22us, performance depends on platform used.In 2004 Quadrics started releasing small to medium switch stand-alone switch configurations called QsNetII E-Series, these configurations range from the 8 to the 128-way systems.
External links
* [http://www.quadrics.com Quadrics website]
* [http://doc.quadrics.com/Quadrics/QuadricsHome.nsf/DisplayPages/3A912204F260613680256DD9005122C7 Quadrics QsNet Page]
* [http://doc.quadrics.com/Quadrics/QuadricsHome.nsf/DisplayPages/476637E138359A1C80256E6A0059B85B Quadrics 8-way]
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