HPCwire: Fulcrum Targets 'Datacenter Ethernet' with New Switch

The Leading Source for Global News and Information Covering the Ecosystem of High Productivity Computing

Leading HPC
Solution Providers

HPCwire >> Features

November 09, 2007

Fulcrum Targets 'Datacenter Ethernet' with New Switch

by Michael Feldman, HPCwire Editor

Fulcrum Microsystems has introduced its latest 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch silicon, the FM4000 series IP router chips. The company is positioning the new devices as the foundation of "Datacenter Ethernet," that is, Ethernet for high-performance computing, server and storage host interconnect, and datacenter aggregation. The FM4000 represents a superset of the FM2000 series, the company's first low-latency 10 GbE switch chip.

Like its FM2000 predecessor, the FM4000 supports up to 24 ports and a sub-microsecond chip latency, enabling fat-tree scalability to thousands of nodes. On top of the FM2000 capabilities, the FM4000 adds layer 3 IP routing, layer 4 TCP and UDP support, and converged enhanced Ethernet (CEE) capabilities. The integrated design means chip latency for the FM4000 is an impressive 300ns, just 100ns more than the 200ns for the non-routing FM2000. While current InfiniBand chip latencies are slightly less, at 140ns, Fulcrum has managed to get its silicon into the same ballpark.

So far, 10 GbE switching has been a no-show in the datacenter, but the folks at Fulcrum sees a big opportunity there. The holy grail of converged Ethernet in the datacenter would eliminate the current islands of computing that currently exist -- Fibre Channel for storage, Ethernet for the communication network between the datacenter tiers, and InfiniBand for HPC clusters.

The CEE capabilities promise to make Ethernet a more general-purpose solution for the datacenter. They provide the ability to pause communication traffic on a priority basis, which enables a lossless fabric implementation. Although CEE is not yet an Ethernet standard, Fulcrum wanted to provide some of these capabilities to give switch vendors the ability to push up against Fibre Channel and InfiniBand.

"There have been a lot of proprietary fabrics in the world, and those are all essentially dying out," said Mike Zeile, Fulcrum Microsystems vice president of marketing. "The last one standing is InfiniBand. It's our view that InfiniBand has worked out -- in the TOP500 at least -- in the absence of 10 Gig Ethernet. Once 10 Gig Ethernet becomes cost effective, along with low latency and improved scalability, then Ethernet wins."

Current implementations of 10 GbE switches using the FM2000 technology include the Quadrics QSTenG, the Force10 S2410 and the Woven EFX 1000. As yet, none of these has proved to be the "InfiniBand killer," although all have approached at least SDR IB switches in bandwidth and latency performance. The problem for Ethernet switch vendors is that InfiniBand is a moving target. The 10 GbE switches have just caught up with SDR, while InfiniBand vendors are already well into DDR (20 Gbps) deployment, with QDR (40 Gbps) coming next year. The additional features of the FM4000 chips, especially IP routing and CEE, may help to create some differentiation from InfiniBand solutions, but that remains to be seen.

We may not have to wait too long though. Coinciding with the Fulcrum announcement, startup Arastra is introducing its new 10 GbE switch based using the FM4000 silicon. The company has been in stealth mode while working in parallel with the Fulcrum team. Arastra is backed by a number of Silicon Valley veterans, including Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim.

Arastra's 7100 series 10 GbE switch is a high-density, 48-port top-of-rack switch that fits into a 1U box and can scale to thousands of ports. It uses the FM4000's CEE intelligence to manage congestion, prioritizing Ethernet traffic on a per port basis. The model enables much finer control of congestion management by slowing down the traffic at the source of the blockage.

"We envision that from the end of next year through 2009, most datacenter customers will be upgrading from 1 Gig to 10 Gig," said Mansour Karam, director of marketing for Arastra. "Our solution will enable this upgrade by offering dense, cost effective 10 Gig switching."

The 48-port switch can connect up to 40 servers and 8 uplinks. Early trials are ongoing with a number of government labs and Wall Street customers.

Article Tools

Share & Save Options

Discussion

There are 0 discussion items posted.

Join the Discussion

You must be a registered user in order to comment on HPCWire stories.

Members enjoy:

	Access to Special Content, including Podcasts, Webcasts, and Whitepapers and more!
	Ability to take an active role in the discussions that are shaping the HPC technology discipline!
	Special offers available only to HPCWire members!

Become a Registered User Today!

Registered Users Log in Here to Comment

Email Address:	Password (case sensitive)

Remember me	Forgot Password?

RSS Feeds

Feeds by Topic

Feeds by Industry

Feeds by Content Type

Top Headlines

25 Years of Conventional Evaluation of Data Analysis Proves Worthless In Practice

Sep 05 | Uppsala University | Swedish researchers are revealing that "intelligent" computer-based methods for classifying patient samples is worthless when it comes to practical problems. Read more...

Three Dimensional Scans Could Revolutionise Brain Surgery

Sep 03 | Telegraph.co.uk | A new form of three dimensional scans could revolutionise brain surgery within a year, doctors claim. Read more...

Marching Penguins: Monitoring Your HPC Cluster

Sep 03 | Linux Magazine | In HPC, most attention is paid to utilization and performance, rather than service availability and problem notification. This article focuses on the latter Read more...

Big Data: Welcome to the Petacentre

Sep 03 | Nature News | What does it take to store bytes by the tens of thousands of trillions? Read more...

UD Scientist Finds Quicker Computer On-Ramp

Sep 01 | Delaware Online | In the world of supercomputer-powered science, speed is everything, and an open road can lead to the promised land. Read more...

Read more headlines...

Featured Whitepapers

SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server for High Performance Computing

Sep 05 | | The excellent scalability features of Linux, in addition to robust security and performance makes it an excellent choice for server systems, especially in the high performance computing area.

“Going Parallel - An Implementation Guide”

Sep 01 | | The paper outlines the basic steps and tools involved in the process of migrating a desktop application to a parallel environment.

Improving Performance and Manageability for Seismic Processing and Imaging Applications with Parallel Storage

Jun 05 | | As pressure increases on the upstream seismic processing community to deliver ever-higher levels of productivity and efficiency, a new generation of storage solutions will be required that allow the maximum utilisation of high-performance computing (HPC) Linux cluster resources, together with the minimum of management overhead.

View the White Paper Library

Multimedia

Video White Paper: Architecting a Better Network Storage Solution

BlueArc's Titan architecture represents an evolutionary step in file servers by creating a hardware-based file system that can scale bandwidth, IOPS, and overall data capacity well beyond conventional software-based devices. With its ability to virtualize a massive storage pool of up to four usable petabytes of tiered storage, Titan can scale with growing data requirements, offering a competitive advantage for businesses, researchers, or other enterprises seeking to better manage data growth while still ensuring optimal performance.

Podcast: Interview with Ben Bennett of ClearSpeed Technology

Today, HPC organizations are requiring substantially more floating point performance to solve real-world problems. In this podcast, Ben Bennett, ClearSpeed General Manager, discusses how acceleration technology can improve the overall performance of standard x86-based systems...