PacketShader

Mon Aug 23 17:17:31 UTC 2010

On 8/23/10 2:59 AM, Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Aug 2010 22:23:19 -1000, Michael Painter said:
>> Researchers in South Korea have built a networking router that
>> transmits data at record speeds from components found in most
>> high-end desktop computers 
>> http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/26096/?nlid=3423
> 
> Two great quotes from the article:
> 
> "That isn't fast enough to take advantage of the full speed of a
> typical network card, which operates at 10 gigabytes per second."
> 
> Anybody got a network of PCs that have cards that run at
> 10GBytes/sec? ;)

I have a journalist who can keep track of signficant digits...

> For that matter, have enough 10Gbit network cards shipped that they
> are now considered "typical" (as in "more than 5%")?  A Lamborghini
> costs about 10 times as much as a nice Camry.  10Gig cards are closer
> to 30-50 times as much as 1gig cards.  Now, if Lambos aren't typical
> cars, are 10Gig cards typical?  Just sayin'....

10gig nics are becoming ubiquitous in datacenters. 10Gigabit on
mainboard is pretty ubiquitous in in bladeservers and adds about $150 to
the BOM of a 1u pizza box in volume (for copper).

> "Lash enough software routers together that run at 40 gigabytes per
> second, and you get what is essentially a single-terabit router.
> Using such a system, routers might some day run completely in
> software."
> 
> Ahh.. but the lashing is the tricky part that costs the big bucks, as
> these guys will undoubtedly discover - life will get a lot more
> complicated once they saturate the first PCI backplane and need a
> second. Who wants to bet they'll end up re-inventing SGI's NUMAlink
> or similar interconnect? ;)

pci isn't a shared bus anymore it's a series of tubes...

In any event, they don't have to, we have quick-path which 100Gb/s
per-direction per path at 3.2ghz or pci-e 3.0 which is 8Gb/s per lane
and comes with all the lovely logic you expect from a (non-ethernet)
switch fabric.

What it really comes down to is packets per watt or packets per dollar,
if it's cheaper to do it this way then people will, if not BFD.

> 