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Workshop on wide area networks and high performance computing pp 283–295Cite as

Design and evaluation of parastation2

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences ((LNCIS,volume 249))

Abstract

ParaStation is a communications fabric to connect off-the-shelf workstations into a supercomputer. This paper presents ParaStation2, an adaption of the ParaStation system (which was build on top of our own hardware) to the Myrinet hardware. The main focus lies on the design and implementation of ParaStation2’s flow control protocol to ensure reliable data transmission at network interface level, which is different to most other projects using Myrinet.

One-way latency is 14.5µs to 18µs (depending on the hardware platform) and throughput is 50 MByte/s to 65 MByte/s, which compares well to other approaches. At application level, we were able to achieve a performance of 5.3 GFLOP running a matrix multiplication on 8 DEC Alpha machines (21164A, 500 MHz).

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Programmstrukturen und Datenorganisation, Fakultät für Informatik, Universität Karlsruhe, Am Fasanengarten 5, D-76128, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Thomas M. Warschko, Joachim M. Blum & Walter F. Tichy

Authors
  1. Thomas M. Warschko
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  2. Joachim M. Blum
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  3. Walter F. Tichy
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Editor information

G. Cooperman (Professor)E. Jessen (Professor)G. Michler (Professor)

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© 1999 Springer-Verlag London Limited

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Warschko, T.M., Blum, J.M., Tichy, W.F. (1999). Design and evaluation of parastation2. In: Cooperman, G., Jessen, E., Michler, G. (eds) Workshop on wide area networks and high performance computing. Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences, vol 249. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0110094

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0110094

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-85233-642-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-84628-578-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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