IEEE 1394: Another Low Cost Viable Alternative Interconnect for High Performance Computing

摘要

With the advent of IP over IEEE 1394 as a network technology, a new contender for a low cost next-generation cluster interconnect is on the horizon. In this paper, we benchmark IEEE 1394 and compare it to other cluster interconnects, namely Fast Ethernet, and Gigabit Ethernet. For a meaningful comparison, benchmark experiments are carried out at three levels: TCP/IP networking and MPI parallel programming, parallel application benchmarks. Using high-end PCs (Pentium IV 800 MHz) and standard system software (Linux and MPICH), our results show that IEEE 1394 is a viable alternative.