HPCwire: Incoming: 10 Gigabit Ethernet for HPC

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November 20, 2008

Incoming: 10 Gigabit Ethernet for HPC

by Dan Tuchler, Vice President of Strategy and Product Management, BLADE Network Technologies

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Sure, it's proven, and a lot of people use it. But like many proprietary technologies, it also has some unappealing characteristics. It demands specialized expertise. It's not always as fast as advertised. It's not completely reliable. It certainly doesn't work and play well with others. Yes, we are talking about InfiniBand.

InfiniBand has been a comfort zone for those tightly-coupled HPC applications that can't live without their addiction to low latency and high speed. If your application is a science experiment with good funding and no firm schedule, that's OK. If your application involves business, deadlines, and ROI, it's time to break out of that comfort zone and acquaint yourself with 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE).

Fifty seven percent of the TOP500 Supercomputer Sites are already using Gigabit Ethernet interconnects. For many of those sites, that one Gigabit will give them all the speed they'll ever need. For those applications that really do need a higher performance interconnect, 10GE can provide it -- and a host of other advantages as well.

Technology You Know

InfiniBand might be the obvious choice in the HPC world, but compared to the well-known and widely-used Ethernet standard, the comfort level of InfiniBand might be equated to sleeping on a bed of nails. IT executives, network administrators, server vendors, and managed service providers around the world understand Ethernet. They can integrate and update an Ethernet installation within an existing infrastructure, without specialized gateways. They know how to manage it and how to benchmark it. They know what to do if something goes wrong. When it comes to Ethernet, familiarity breeds peace of mind.

More Cost-Effective and Already There

With costs going up, power at a premium, and manageability critical, it's no surprise that converging and consolidating have become central themes in networking. Converged voice and data networks are becoming pervasive. Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) will merge storage and standard network applications on a common infrastructure. Virtualization is fast becoming a critical technology to support server and storage consolidation in the datacenter.

When it comes to reducing capital and operating expenses, one infrastructure is simply better than two -- or more -- and the HPC environment is no exception. High-performance computing clusters that use an InfiniBand interconnect also use Ethernet. Ethernet is necessary for user and storage connectivity, and for the management network that orchestrates the cluster. Replacing the InfiniBand interconnect with 10GE to create a single, all-inclusive infrastructure will cut hardware and power costs, and simplify manageability. And, that infrastructure combines high performance with low power needs and a sufficiently low latency for many HPC applications, making it an excellent fit for technical and budget requirements.

Prices are Plummeting

As with many technologies, 10GE was not initially cost-effective for widespread use. In fact, at one point a 10GE connection cost more than the server. But that ship has sailed. Now 10GE is so cost-effective that server vendors are starting to include the technology as a built-in standard feature. And switch prices are falling too. A number of switch vendors are offering 10 GE switches with a list price less than $500 per port.

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