Nicolas Boulay wrote:
Super IO for x86 : gigabyte ethernet card 8 or 16 ports which are seen from
the host like one ethernet card (with pci-e speed), the card act like a big
switch (with a kind of routing). So you could make very fast interconnection
between server (imaging direct connection between calcul server and file
server).
You could also make a SATA RAID controller. The idea is to saturate a pci-e
link (2*300 MB/s). You could do it with 8 to 16 HD.
IO connections are the 2 domains where PC can't be compare with mainframe.
Standard (ethernet, SATA) put the cost down. What is lacking is a card to
connect the PC with the network and the HD.
nicO
+1 for storage products
According to [1] at the end of 2008 the storage market
will exceed $200 billion.
- High performance SATA/SAS RAID controller (PCI-Express / HTX interface)
Today's high performance controllers price is near to $1000. However it
is not possible to saturate the x8/x16 PCI-E interface with these cards.
Most SATA/SAS controller comes with an PCI-X chip that is bridged to
PCI-Express interface. eg.: Areca (Marvell Hercules2 SATA controller +
Intel IOP PCI-X to PCI-Express bridge), LSI 1068 is still is a PCI-X
device therefore the bandwidth is limited to 1Gbytes/sec.
The card (especially when combined with an add-on fpga accelerator card)
would be ideal for database or HPC usage.
- FPGA accelerator card with gigabytes of memory (PCI-Express / HTX/
Infiniband interface)
Crypto, compressing, computing error correcting codes, pattern matching,
sorting or filtering data is not possible at n * 100Mbytes/sec rate.
Special device drivers would be feasible with this card [2].
- SAN/NAS storage standalone controller(iSCSI/FC/Infiniband) for SAN/NAS
manufacturers and DIY people. Real-time intrusion detection or virus
detection would be feasible with an additional FPGA card.
- Solid state disk
[1] http://www.storagesearch.com/squeak-5.html
[2] http://www.openhardware.de/digital/kad/
Zoltan
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