You might be able to do RC5 quickly with a bunch of cubix boxes, but to get real work done, you often need a good interconnect. 100baseT just doesn't cut it from a latency or bandwidth perspective.
Later in the press releases, they mention that they've partnered with Myricom. I presume that a big chunk of the money went to Myricom for a large Myrinet interconnect (>1Gbit/second, programmable NICs, ultra-low latenccy).
Also, they mention a fancy storage system; depending on the size and performance, a good storage system (many drives, all hooked up to the myrinet) can cost a bunch of money.
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Neat stuff!
Can you point me to more info about the SAN?
Is it "just" a bunch of fibre channel hooked up to boxes with myrinet and FC cards?
You might be able to do RC5 quickly with a bunch of cubix boxes, but to get real work done, you often need a good interconnect. 100baseT just doesn't cut it from a latency or bandwidth perspective. Later in the press releases, they mention that they've partnered with Myricom. I presume that a big chunk of the money went to Myricom for a large Myrinet interconnect (>1Gbit/second, programmable NICs, ultra-low latenccy). Also, they mention a fancy storage system; depending on the size and performance, a good storage system (many drives, all hooked up to the myrinet) can cost a bunch of money.