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Sun says its the first in the industry with multi-core and multi-CPU aware NICs

This week Sun Microsystems announced that it has become the world's first major vendor of 10gigabit Ethernet network cards. Sun had been working on a project called Neptune for the majority of 2006, which was to introduce 10GbE devices to the market, first and foremost on its own systems. According to Sun, its 10GbE adapter is also the world's first to employ multi-threading technology. According to Sun, the adapter is aware of multi-processor or multi-core systems, and is able to bind threads to specific processor affinities for greater throughput and efficiency.

According to Sun:

Sun's 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter extends CPU and OS parallelism to networking with its support for hardware-based flow classification and multiple DMAs. Using CPU thread affinity to bind a given flow to a specific CPU thread, it enables a one-to-one correlation of Rx and Tx packets across the same TCP connection.

Sun also said in a statement that its new 10GbE network adapter uses its own in-house ASIC for transferring data. The company previously purchased 10GbE adapters from S2IO which Sun ended up using in its own systems. "The Solaris OS has been a multithreaded system for years, and the latest UltraSPARC processors offer powerful chip multithreading. But what has been missing is extending multithreading into the I/O environment and networking space," said Sunay Tripathi, one of Sun's distinguished engineers.

Sun's 10GbE adapter sends data over fiber optics instead of typical Cat5 Ethernet cable used in today's typical network environments. The adapter also has dual ports, each capable of 10Gbit/sec. transfer rates and a combined rate of 16Gbit/sec. The card will sit in an x8 PCI-Express slot and ship with a starting price of $498 USD per card. According to Sun, the price is already 1/3 the cost of other 10GbE adapters. Sun said in a statement that it plans to integrate 10GbE capabilities across all of its systems throughout 2007.

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Hmm
By krichmond on 2/21/2007 10:17:27 AM , Rating: 1
PCI Express 8x technology only allows for transfer speeds up to 2000MB/s half duplex or 4000MB/s Full duplex. I would love to know how their card can transmit at a speed faster than its interface… I think its cool, but I don’t think servers could use it at this point. Maybe switches that have a higher internal speed can use it in packet redirection?




RE: Hmm
By AmbroseAthan on 2/21/2007 10:23:01 AM , Rating: 5
You are using big B's, they are using little b's. Their little b's fly in packs of 8 compared to your big B. ;-)


RE: Hmm
By OpticalFloptical on 2/21/2007 10:45:21 AM , Rating: 3
10 GigaBITs = 1.25G gigaBYTES, both channels = 16 GigaBITs = 2 GigaBYTES. Even with both interfaces running full duplex = 32 GigaBITs = 4 GigaBYTEs. Where's the problem again?

"I think its cool, but I don’t think servers could use it at this point. "

Uh yeah they can. I managed a very large SGI install, and that SGI can saturate 16+ of those links. I have an 8 core opteron system that easily saturates 2 10Gb/s Infiniband links. You do realize that there are systems that have THOUSANDS of processors? Would you want to have HUNDREDS of 1Gb links?

If by server you mean your desktop PC running Linux, then yes this is overkill.

"Maybe switches that have a higher internal speed can use it in packet redirection?"

Well Captain Obvious - a switch damn well better have a higher internal speed than a single port would suggest. That is the nature of a switch. if you have 16 ports and your fabric is only rated at 12Gbits/sec then you have issues.

The additional port is for a multipath connection, not 16Gbit on each port. You know Port A to Switch 1, Port B to Switch 2...

The server world is quite different that the PC world. Most people would sh*t them selves if they knew that a 10Gb/ ethernet switch cost about $1000 per port.

Sun does not manufacture that card, it is an OEM piece. just like their SCSI & FC cards... SGI does the same. -
I think that Neterion is the OEM.


RE: Hmm
By krichmond on 2/21/07, Rating: 0
RE: Hmm
By ninjit on 2/21/2007 1:17:28 PM , Rating: 3
Buddy, you just got educated by two others because you obviously don't know what you are talking about, and then go on a rant because of it.
It's pretty apparent that you are the one being hostile (and most likely 12 years old too)


RE: Hmm
By krichmond on 2/21/07, Rating: 0
RE: Hmm
By alifbaa on 2/21/2007 1:59:45 PM , Rating: 2
I'm not one to make fun of noobs. We all start somewhere.
But if you post on a news item regarding such advanced networking hardware as 10G and don't know the difference between B and b, you can expect someone to teach you the difference. Take your new education and be thankful that you learned something. Don't be a retard and complain about your own idiocy being pointed out.

Also, for future reference, Sun is a world renowned computer manufacturer, and an undisputed leader in the industry. They don't make stuff for consumers who (like some people) don't know what they're buying. They make stuff for scientists, engineers, major IT companies, etc. If you think they're offering something that is under-designed, chances are you just don't understand the technology. In such a case, feel free to post and ask a question about how it works. Better yet, Google it and learn for yourself. Don't jump on here and act superior. It doesn't bother anyone, it just makes you look like a fool, and will only result in jerks like me voting you down even further.


RE: Hmm
By FITCamaro on 2/21/2007 2:38:59 PM , Rating: 2
Opterons don't have a FSB. And eight Opteron cores using Hypertransport can easily saturate an 8x PCI-E port since you yourself state that it maxes out at 4GB/s while the processors do at 24GB/s. And typically that high a bandwidth is used for networked computers (those thousands of processor systems) which are used for crunching numbers, not writing to a hard drive. I don't know what the fastest giant SCSI RAID systems are capable of reading/writing at though. But those systems can keep up with the network connection.

Also, please learn what grammar is.

"...and making it to the end device with is recording or whatever at it’s peak..."

What?


Watch out Killer Nic
By TedStriker on 2/21/2007 10:08:29 AM , Rating: 2
But will it have a gold S for a heatsink?




RE: Watch out Killer Nic
By qualme on 2/21/2007 3:12:12 PM , Rating: 2
and thats what i was looking for LOL


RE: Watch out Killer Nic
By Zorlac on 2/21/2007 4:10:49 PM , Rating: 2
LMAO!

classic


IB vs 10GEthernet
By brainer on 2/21/2007 8:18:28 PM , Rating: 2
I've been using Infiniband for my opteron clusters. Though they are PCIe 4x card, they work very well giving sustained transfer rate at 800MB/sec for video data without RDMA. In lab test, could even achieve 1.0GB and they cost me less than Sun offerings. Anyone have similar experience in benchmark between 10GEthernet and IB and would like to share? I would like to know the difference.




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