High-Speed Links Favor Ethernet

Ethernet dominates high-speed interconnection in the world's biggest supercomputing sites, and it's likely to keep that momentum.

The unveiling of the world's biggest supercomputers at this week's International Supercomputer Conference in Heidelberg, Germany, showed Gigabit Ethernet is the preferred network in 42.4 percent of the top 500 sites (see Top Supercomputers Revealed).

Myrinet, a packet-based switching technology sold by Myricom Inc., is in second place, used in 28.2 percent of sites. InfiniBand, despite the hype of vocal supporters, occupies just over 3 percent of sites. The rest of the top supercomputers rely on a range of proprietary and even arcane solutions.

Table 1: Top 500 Supercomputer Interconnects

Gigabit Ethernet has risen 11 percent since the last Top 500 list in November 2004; Myrinet use has toppled 22 percent. While there is fluctuation in the use of other technologies, it appears that Ethernet's a clear winner in the world's fastest sites.The increased popularity of supercomputing in commercial networks makes the trend toward Ethernet in the Top 500 worth some reflection (see Invasion of the Coneheads). If Ethernet can accommodate the requirements of these hefty sites, it should be able to grow in grids, storage networks, and clusters elsewhere.

Evidence that Ethernet continues to drive the bus showed in several high-speed interconnect announcements at this week's show:

These solutions all differ in their levels of interoperability with existing networks. Many of their claims for performance improvements, particularly in areas like latency and bandwidth, remain to be proven. They also aren't the only developments in high-speed interconnection. But unlike news emerging from InfiniBand suppliers like Mellanox Technologies Ltd., they are focused on leveraging Ethernet. And at least one analyst thinks that could ensure their future (see Mellanox Doubles InfiniBand).

"The short answer is one I learned over the last 20 yeras: 'never bet against Ethernet,'" writes David Passmore, research director at the Burton Group, when asked via email about the prospects of the various interconnects. Passmore maintains that solutions like the ones mentioned above are aimed at key problems holding Ethernet back from high-speed connectivity in data centers and storage. As these problems are solved, Ethernet will squeeze out some other technologies."Fibre Channel will soon succumb to iSCSI in storage networks," he writes. And InfiniBand will be a "niche technology."

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch