Mx204 alternative

Tue Sep 3 02:07:11 UTC 2019

On 9/2/19 6:04 PM, Mark Tinka wrote:
>> Like how about 8-16*100GE single Trio PCI card with no-questions
>> asked, specification released, would there be a market? I like to
>> think there would be.
> I'd be down for this.
> 
> Mark.

Oh my gosh this.  Especially if the docs are truly public (i.e. 
available with single click-wrap "don't be an asshat" license or even 
something like GDFL) and not just under NDA, but honestly even if it's 
an NDA required as long as it's broadly available for issuance (no need 
to be a high-volume) Broadcom partner and allows the results of its use 
to be distributed as F/OSS software, I'm game.

I kinda wonder if the culture at Broadcom has changed any since the 
merger/acquisition with Avagao.  Obviously in ye olde days, you wouldn't 
even get the time of day from them unless you were wanting to commit to 
a million or so in sales.

I spread my interest (and professional practice) between SP networking, 
industrial networking, industrial controls, and industrial computing 
including hardware, so this is drool-level interest for me even if I 
don't get to work on it directly.  So much so that I've been wanting to 
play with an FPGA platform for this sort of thing, but there's just no 
compelling reason given that existing, openly-documented accelerated 
NICs from e.g. Intel on high-end PC hardware can basically match the 
performance of any reasonable-cost FPGA Ethernet switching system in 
useful workloads.
-- 
Brandon Martin