[rescue] SGI, Origin 200, and speed?

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Sat, 01 May 2004 @ 15:47 +1200, James Braid said:

> >The Origin 3000 website talks about Xtown2 ports as being bidirectional
> >1.6GB/sec interfaces, which is faster than Craylink.  It seems to be
> >used for I/O though... in fact I'm reading the site now and don't see
> >where it specifically says what is used for the interconnect fabric.
> 
> CrayLinks name got changed to NUMAlink after SGI got rid of Cray.

The name makes more sense now too.

> The Origin 3000 uses NUMAlink3 which is pretty much the original 
> NUMAlink running at a higher clock rate and gives you 1.6GB/sec 
> bidirectional. NUMAlink is the CPU/router interconnect.
> 
> XTown2 is the interconnect for I/O (i.e. from C/R-brick to I-brick, 
> G-brick, X-brick, P{X,E}-brick). It runs at 1.2GB/sec bidirectional and 
> is pretty much "external XIO". Most bricks have two XTown2 connectors on 
> them.

Right.  Interesting choice for a name (Crosstown Traffic).  The cables
should have been purple.

> The Origin 3000 architecture is insanely cool. 

Definitely.  The expansion you can do is amazing.  When the 3000 arrived
at my last job people came from all over the building to see it.  It was
an instant celebrity.

> The other neat thing is 
> that hardware-wise the Altix systems are basically Origin 3000 systems 
> with different CPUs. 

Didn't realize that.  If figured the Itanium would require a lot of
different support.  

The 3000 site also mentions Linux, but I've not looked for more about
that.  It could just mean Altix.

> >Unlike their O2000 pages which lists the memory bandwidth, the O3000
> >site only lists the aggregate bandwidth.
> 
> Peak local memory bandwidth on Origin 3000 is 3.2GB/sec IIRC.

I meant the speed of each NUMAlink.  But it appears to be 1.6GB/sec
bidirectional.  That's double the Craylink data rate.

> We have a baby Onyx3 (only 8p + 1 g-brick) and an Origin 300 at $work, 
> along with a couple of Origin 2000 systems. Its nice gear to use.

A friend of mine has picked up an Origin 2000 and has it in his small
shop.  Not running yet.




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