Cheap cluster crushes Cray?

TAIWANESE computer manufacturer, Iwill is claiming that its DK8-HTX clustering server nodes have significantly better interconnect latency than other products on the market. According to the company, the system offers latency of 1.32 microseconds (for 8-byte messages through an InfiniBand switch), compared to 1.8 microseconds for Cray's technology, and 4 microseconds for existing InfiniBand products.

"This is the cheapest solution to cluster desktop-class PC technology together," said Gary Lin, Iwill's product marketing manager, speaking at the Computex trade show in Taipei. "Athlon and Xeon have enough power for supercomputing applications," Lin continued, “the major problem has been how to connect with low latency at low cost.”

The DK8-HTX uses technology from PathScale, which bypasses most of the mainboard and plugs InfiniBand directly into an AMD CPU's high-bandwidth HyperTransport link. Pathscale's ASIC is mounted on a separate card plugged into the mainboard. Linux clustering appears to be the main target market. PathScale offers an open technology, says Lin, "but it isn't easy for everyone to implement". Sheesh!

Iwill predicts the product will have a "giant impact" on high-performance computing and supercomputing applications - though, to paraphrase Mandy Rice Davies, "they would say that, wouldn't they". Want proof? The company first talked about the DK8-HTX last year, but is now ready to demonstrate a 128-node system, perhaps as early as the International Supercomputer Conference (ISC) in Heidelberg later this month.

Mandy Rice Davies is here.