Platform Description

Myrinet overview

Myrinet is a network technology developped by Myricom. It is based on point-to-point wires that links switches and final nodes to form any topology. Each link is capable of full bi-directional 1.2Gbit/s bandwidth.

LHPC experiment platform

Our experiment platform consists of :

4 PentiumPro 200 MHz computers.
2 Pentium 133 MHz computers.
1 Alpha Workstation 500 MHz.
1 Dual Pentium II 350MHz.

Each computer has a myricom M2M-PCI32 board (or a M2F-PCI32) with LANAI4.1 processor and 256Kbytes memory. The eight stations are linked together by a Myricom 8-port switch (4 SAN + 4LAN).

All this stations run the Linux Operating system (kernel version 2.0.36) with the Debian 2.0 Distribution.

The eight stations are linked to the Ethernet network to communicate with the "outside" world. The Ethernet network is also used as a fallback network for the IP traffic between these stations. For instance when we want to have direct access to the Myrinet boards, we have implemented a daemon that allows a user to shutdown the myrinet IP interface and to redirect the IP traffic to Ethernet, and then the user can safely use direct access to the card (with our own BIP messages).

Description of the systems:

lhpcb : Dual PII 350 MHz, Bus 100 MHz, 128 Mo, Disk SCSI, DVD-ROM, Ethernet 10, video acquisition card Matrox Meteor and color camera, Sound, Myrinet.

lhpcd : Alpha workstation 500 MHz Miata, 128 Mo, Disk SCSI, CDROM, Ethernet 10, Sound, Myrinet.

lhpce : Pentium Pro 200 MHz, 128 Mo, Disk IDE, CDROM, Ethernet 10, video acquisition card Matrox Meteor and color camera, Sound, Myrinet.

lhpcf : Pentium Pro 200 MHz, 64 Mo, Disk IDE, Ethernet 10, Myrinet.

lhpcg : Pentium Pro 200 MHz, 64 Mo, Disk IDE, Ethernet 10, Myrinet, gigaEthernet Packet Engine.

lhpch : Pentium Pro 200 MHz, 64 Mo, Disk IDE, Ethernet 10, Myrinet, gigaEthernet Packet Engine.

lhpci : Pentium 133 MHz, 64 Mo, Disk IDE, Ethernet 10, Myrinet.

lhpcj : Pentium 200 MHz MMX, 64 Mo, Disk IDE, Ethernet 10, Myrinet.

LHPC second experiment platform

At the end of June 1997, a new Myrinet plaform build by MATRA Systèmes & Information with twelve processors was installed at ENS-LYON. The packaging used is modular and can be easily moved. It offers an excellent performance/volume ratio. More details and photos on the main LHPC Web serveur.

Installation tips

Here acces to installation tips

The Performances

Here acces to the Performances