Networking Bible

Chapter 16. High-Speed Interconnects

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Different high-speed network standards

• Techniques for offloading network processing

• High-performance networked computers

• Grid, mesh, edge, and cloud computing

High-performance computing requires networks to function. They can be powerful systems that use high-speed networks, or distributed systems that have many members and can use low-speed networks. In this chapter, you look at both types of solutions.

Ethernet is a pervasive networking standard. The current leading-edge Ethernet systems use 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE). This standard is described, as well as the future forms of Ethernet that are currently under development.

Networks currently can carry more traffic than most computers can process. To make computers more efficient, a number of technologies have been introduced. TCP Offload Engines (TOEs) can remove most of the network I/O and make computers much more efficient.

Another set of technologies that are similar to TOEs are called zero copy networks. They create a virtual network interface that also offloads network processing. The Virtual Interface Architecture and the InfiniBand peripheral bus are examples of zero copy networks that are examined. Five of the ten most powerful computers in the world were built using this high-performance bus.

A number of different network cluster types are discussed. These include fault-tolerant systems that provide failover, load-balanced solutions that help achieve better utilization on server ...