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Persistent URL http://purl.org/net/epubs/work/36459
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Record Id 36459
Title Gigabit Ethernet - an HPC interconnect? I: findings from synthetic benchmark studies
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Abstract The Message Passing Interface standard (MPI) is currently the most common programming model deployed by the HPC community to parallelise a wide range of applications in computational science and engineering for distributed memory architectures. For mid-range/capacity HPC, clusters of servers based on commodity technologies (x86 typically) and commodity interconnects such as Gigabit Ethernet are widely deployed. Whilst higher performance (and higher price) interconnects such as Myrinet have been shown to be essential for some classes of HPC applications, it is thought that Gigabit Ethernet is an adequate, cost-effective approach for a wide range of codes. Our investigations show that the performance of MPI applications on typical Gigabit Ethernet clusters can vary dramatically depending on a number of factors concerned with choice of hardware and software, and that in some cases performance can be so poor and unpredictable, at even modest process counts, that a more sensible and cost-effective strategy may be to invest either in proprietary MPI libraries, very specific Ethernet switch architectures, or higher performance interconnects instead.
Organisation CCLRC , CSE , CSE-DisCo
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Language English (EN)
Type Details URI(s) Local file(s) Year
Report DL Technical Reports DL-TR-2006-009. 2006. DL-TR-2006-009.pdf 2006