Myrinet Networking

As a premier integrator of Myricom's Myrinet products, Aspen Systems, Inc. is highly experienced in Myrinet network configuration. Custom configuration, performance testing & optimization of the Myrinet environment is included with every Myrinet-based Aspen Systems cluster. If you're interested in a Myrinet component price quote, please fill out our online Myrinet quote request form.

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Overview

Myrinet is a cost-effective, high-performance, packet communication and switching technology that is widely used to interconnect clusters of workstations, PCs, or single-board computers. Conventional networks such as Ethernet can be used to build clusters, but do not provide the performance or features required for high-performance or high-availability clustering.

Myricom Myrinet is the market leader in high-performance, high-availability, cluster interconnects. Myricom shipped its first Myrinet products in August 1994 and there are now thousands of Myrinet installations, ranging in size up to more than 1,000 hosts. These sites include many of the world's premier cluster-computing systems.

Characteristics that distinguish Myrinet from other networks include:

• Full-duplex 2+2 Gigabits/s or 10+10 Gigabits/s data rate links, switch ports, and interface ports
• Flow control, error control, and "heartbeat" continuity monitoring on every link
• Low-latency, cut-through, crossbar switches, with monitoring for high-availability applications
• Switch networks that can interconnect hundreds of hosts with a single, full-bisection network component, can scale to tens of thousands of hosts, & that can also provide alternative communication paths between hosts
• Host interfaces that execute a control program to interact directly with host processes ("OS bypass") for low-latency communication, and directly with the network to send, receive, and buffer packets

Myrinet is an American National Standard -- ANSI/VITA 26-1998. The link and routing specifications are public, published, and open.

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Myrinet Components and Software

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Myrinet Switches

The rack-mountable switch enclosures come complete with power supply, fan cooling, and a backplane (pre-wired network between the line cards). The top slot is reserved for a monitoring line card. The other slots accept port line cards (below) with up to 8 ports on the front panel, and 8 System Area Network ports that connect to the backplane.

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Myrinet Software

Myrinet Express (MX) Software

Myrinet Express (MX) is a new message-passing system from Myricom that provides lower latency with middleware layers such as MPI. MX includes ethernet emulation and support for all protocols that run over ethernet, including TCP/IP and UDP/IP. MX was developed for the Myri-10G series of NICs, but MX-2G is already available on several operating systems for the PCI-X series of Myrinet NICs. MX was developed for the Myri-10G series of NICs and is fully compatible with MX-2G at the API and application levels. Myrinet-2000 and Myri-10G employ the same network architecture and protocols, and, when used with MX software support, are fully compatible with respect to applications and application-programming interfaces.

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Fabric Management System

Myricom's Fabric Management System (FMS) provides centralized diagnostic monitoring of the Myrinet fabric from a command-line or web interface. FMS consists of one FMS server process to manage the fabric, and many Fabric Management Agent (FMA) processes, one running on each Myrinet node in the fabric. It is an important diagnostic tool for verifying the health of the Myrinet hardware.

The Fabric Management System (FMS) for Myrinet networks may be used with either the MX or GM low-level firmware. FMS can be used with GM-1 and supersedes Mute, the previous management software provided by Myricom.

For further information, please see Myricom's Fabric Management System page.

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For more about Myrinet-2000 and Myri-10G interfaces, please visit the detailed pages linked from this page. You'll also find a comparison of Myrinet-2000 and Myri-10G products in our hardware comparisons section.

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