[mvapich-discuss] MVAPICH2 and Broadcom 5706

[paolo.zini at ipcf.cnr.it]

Hi all.

My name is  Paolo, I am in Pisa, Italy.

I have a maybe stupid question, but I am new here, be patient.

I have a small cluster, 16 nodes based on dual opteron machines with gigabit
network, used for parallel computations.

I use Suse 10 and mpich2 on it.

The problem is that the delay introduced by the TCP stack affects the system
efficiency.

I would like to improve it, using MVAPICH2, but the budget available is
small.

According to tests found in literature, using MPI with Ammasso cards would
reduce the delay to 20 - 30 microseconds.

This would be interesting for me, because the communication requirements
anren't so high...

If  I understand, now Ammasso cards are available only on Ebay. the idea
would be to install low cost Broadcom gigabit cards, based on 5706 chip.

Broadcom claims that 5706 and 5708 are iWARP compliant, MVAPICH2 supports
iWARP hardware, MVAPICH2 have been used with gigabit nets using Ammasso
cards, but I haven't found any experience based on Broadcom cards.

Can I install Broadcom cards, MVAPICH2 and use RDMA?



Can anyone enlighten me?



Tank you for any help.



Paolo Zini
IPCF istituto del CNR,
Area della ricerca di Pisa