Networking

Systems Issues in Building Gigabyte Networks
Joe Gervais
System Area Networks require more than a fast channel like Gigabyte System Network (GSN) to achieve high performance. An overview of the Scheduled Transfer (ST) Protocol for OS Bypass will be provided. ST is a connection-oriented data transfer protocol that can be thought of as Network DMA. A survey of systems issues in interfacing to a gigabyte per second network will be done. Applications of technology to other networks such as Gigabit Ethernet will also be presented.

Super Computer Communications
Ralph Niederberger
In the last decade the communication throughput of computer networks has increased in more and more shorter timeperiods. Furthermore new networking protocols with essential higher bandwidths become available. Concerning this evolution the distribution of parallel applications which are connected via a high speed computer network becomes increasingly interesting.

This paper will examine what currently available supercomputer systems can contribute to such metacomputing environments.

GSN and ST: Infrastructures for High Bandwidth, Low Latency Communications
Brad Strand
Gigabyte System Network (GSN) and Scheduled Transfers (ST) are two new networking technologies that SGI is currently developing. These technologies are described here, including some details regarding SGI's implementation of them. GSN and ST are shown to map well into certain problem spaces of interest to SGI's customers. Finally, GSN and ST performance numbers are given, and compared to other networking technologies.


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