Woven Launches New 10 GbE Switch

By Michael Feldman

October 14, 2008

Woven Systems has expanded its Ethernet product lineup with a new 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) top-of-rack switch. The 24-port TRX 200 offers 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) wirespeed performance on each port and InfiniBand-like latencies. The TRX 200 joins Woven’s other two offerings, the 48-port Gigabit Ethernet TRX 100 top-of-rack switch and the 144-port 10 GbE “Fabric Switch” for the network core.

Like its Woven brethren, the TRX 200 is aimed at HPC and Web services — two markets where bandwidth and latency requirements exceed that of the standard enterprise setup. Leading-edge interconnect performance has been the norm in HPC environments for some time. But with the advent of the Web services industry, a whole new market is developing for high bandwidth, low latency infrastructure. In this area, search engines or any application that performs Web page indexing must often operate with soft real-time constraints, so node-to-node latencies must be kept to a minimum.

Bandwidth can always be overprovisioned with extra switches, but that doesn’t help the latency picture. Woven has specifically designed its products for InfiniBand-like latencies. Instead of store-and-forward switching used in standard Ethernet gear, Woven employs cut-through switching. The company claims latencies of 1.6µs for its flagship EFX 1000 switch.

Woven’s big story with the new TRX 200 top-of-rack switch is its pricing. At less than $500 per wirespeed 10 Gbps port ($11,995 for a single unit), Woven is pushing back against Arastra, its closest competitor in high-performance 10 GbE switching. When Arastra launched its line of Ethernet gear last year, it quoted $400 per port. But it’s not clear if that pricing applies across its entire product line. The new TRX against Arastra’s 24-port 7124S would be the real apples-to-apples comparison, since both products claim to offer bi-directional wirespeed performance (480 Gbps aggregate) plus low latency.

The closest Cisco gear is probably the 4900M, which is a top-of-rack switch for users transitioning from GbE to 10 GbE. But at a maximum aggregate throughput of just 320 Gbps, and latencies in the 2.6µs range (according to eWeek testing), the Cisco switch is really not in the same performance ballpark as the Woven and Arastra offerings. Also, with a price that starts at $22,000, the 4900M is at least twice as expensive as its upstart competition.*

The roadblocks remaining for the Woven offerings, and for 10 GbE switches in general, are price (compared to standard Gigabit Ethernet) and performance (compared to InfiniBand). But if you are an Ethernet vendor, time may be on your side.

Many in the industry are predicting that by 2010 10 GbE will move onto the server motherboard en masse, reducing the cost of connection from about $300 or $400 down to around $22 dollars. (The real cost to the buyer is even a bit less than that since motherboard manufacturers will be replacing the older GbE interfaces.) In that same year, the total cost of a 10 GbE connection will be just twice that of a GbE connection. In 2002, the 2x cost differential proved to be an inflection point for the transition from Fast Ethernet to GbE. “That will usher in a much bigger ramp for 10 GigE servers and thus the beginning of a large transformation of the datacenter,” predicts Woven VP of marketing Joe Ammirato.

If history does repeat itself, one of the first places we’re likely to see the GbE to 10 GbE transition is on the TOP500 list. Even today, 57 percent of the top “supercomputers” are based on GbE. It must be said, though, that in most of these cases, the interconnect is not the bottleneck for system performance, or if it is, it’s a tolerable one. For loosely-coupled, embarrassingly-parallel applications, node-to-node communications are only needed intermittently, so larger latencies and lower bandwidth are not as much of an issue.

For more tightly-coupled HPC applications, DDR InfiniBand is now the interconnect of choice. When 10 GbE goes mainstream, the choice becomes more difficult. Joe Ammirato says both performance and cost are catching up to InfiniBand, even without the benefit of native 10 GbE on the motherboard. When that happens, the interconnect interface becomes essentially free for Ethernet fabrics compared to InfiniBand, which will still require a $300 adapter.

DDR and QDR InfiniBand will still have the raw performance advantage, offering perhaps a half or a third the latency of the best Ethernet solutions and more than twice the bandwidth (QDR is 40 Gbps, but because the on-board PCIe interface limits how fast data can be moved, only about 25 Gbps is realized). Masum Mir, Woven’s senior product manager, admits that InfiniBand will remain viable, but the presence of affordable 10 GbE solutions will compete at the high end. Especially with larger clusters and more variable traffic data traffic patterns, Mir sees Ethernet solutions like theirs — with dynamic congestion avoidance and lossless fabric support — as the more flexible choice.

Certainly for end users looking for a longer ROI horizon, Ethernet will look less risky. The battle cry of all Ethernet vendors continues to be that Ethernet will prevail. This may be less true for HPC users, who have come to view InfiniBand as a more mainstream technology with each passing year. And with much of the discussion about 10 GbE still in the future tense, companies like Woven Systems will be required to push the technology uphill for the next couple of years.

*Update: A more accurate comparison may be with Cisco’s new Nexus 5020, a 40-port 10 GbE switch that offers wirespeed performance and a switch latency of 3.2µs. The 5020 can be expanded to up to 52 10 GbE ports to yield an aggregate throughput of 1 Tbps. At around $900 per port it’s twice as expensive as the Woven or Arastra gear, but the Cisco box also comes with support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet and Cisco Data Center Ethernet.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

Nvidia Appoints Andy Grant as EMEA Director of Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI

March 22, 2024

Nvidia recently appointed Andy Grant as Director, Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). With over 25 years of high-performance computing (HPC) experience, Grant brings a Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire