Hi Mark, On Mon, 2006-04-03 at 16:08, Uncle Fester wrote: > I am interested in getting my hands messy with Infiniband--and perhaps > in eventually contributing in some small way to its progress. I have > done very rudimentary research, but would like to confirm my > assumptions with the experts here so that I don't spend my money > unwisely. > > I would like to add infiniband capability to two amd64 systems in my > lab. These have PCI-X Tyan S2882 motherboards. I'm running linux on > these systems.
I have a couple of these same motherboards too that I'm using for IB development and testing. > Can infiniband function properly in a physical point to point > topology? I would prefer to not invest in switches if it's not > entirely necessary. The documentation I've glanced at so far seems to > indicate that infiniband is logically point-to-point. But the > diagrams representing physical topology all seem to have switches. > Other than obviously not being able to communicate across a fabric, is > there functionality missing from a point-to-point topology? Does it > even work? Yes. You can run back to back HCAs. You will need to run an SM on one of the hosts. > What's the best HCA card for me? I'm drawn to Mellanox MT23108-based > systems because OpenIB seems to support them well > (https://openib.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=MellanoxHcaFirmware). > I'm considering purchasing two HP NC570C cards > (http://h30094.www3.hp.com/product.asp?sku=2603660&;), which are based > on that Mellanox chip. Does anybody know if those cards would be > functional in non-hp gear? In other words, does HP have their own > proprietary goodies in the cards that would cause them to break in > generic systems such as what I have? Are there better cards for me? There are a number of Mellanox based cards which would work (for PCI-X). You can get these from a variety of vendors (Voltaire, Cisco, SilverStorm) as well as HP. -- Hal > Thank you very much for your time and advice. > > Sincerely, > Mark Travis > > > > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > New Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Call regular phones from your PC and > save big. > > ______________________________________________________________________ > > _______________________________________________ > openib-general mailing list > [email protected] > http://openib.org/mailman/listinfo/openib-general > > To unsubscribe, please visit http://openib.org/mailman/listinfo/openib-general _______________________________________________ openib-general mailing list [email protected] http://openib.org/mailman/listinfo/openib-general To unsubscribe, please visit http://openib.org/mailman/listinfo/openib-general
