Kurt Keville wrote: > ...I want the head node to have 6 > connections directly to the hard drives... I figure this would > require some sort of SATA pigtail in the client nodes, and a 6 > node SATA card in the head node...
It sounds like you are describing having a 2-to-1 Y-cable connecting to each hard drive, where each drive is under control of two hosts. Am I understanding that correctly? Never mind the software challenges, I'm not sure you can pull that off electrically. SATA is a high-speed serial bus, which is going to be sensitive to cable termination and require active electronics to combine signals from both hosts. Have you seen an off-the-shelf device to do that? There are SATA multiplexer chips, but they typically are designed to expand one host port into multiple device ports. You're looking to do the opposite. > Well the first batch of nodes we are going to try this with are the > Jetson TK1s... > http://www.nvidia.com/object/jetson-tk1-embedded-dev-kit.html ... > there aren't a lot of I/O options and we have already tested the onboard > GigE and found it to be lacking in a couple of areas. What about USB3? What about the "Half Mini-PCIE Slot?" Or the SD/MMC Connector? Any of those should get you high-bandwidth I/O, with USB3 being the easiest to link up using off-the-shelf gear. Or you can get GigE Mini-PCIE Ethernet cards for $15: http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Amini%20pci%20ethernet%20card -Tom _______________________________________________ Hardwarehacking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/hardwarehacking
