[rescue] SGI files Ch11 again, bought by Rackable for $25M

[jodys at helluin.org]

On Wed, Apr 01, 2009 at 11:18:17AM -0600, Robert Darlington wrote:
> HIPPI was the world's first gigabit networking system.  Friends of mine
> worked with SGI to develop it, got an R&D 100 award out of the deal etc.
> Major breakthrough at the time (late 1990s I guess, before my time there).
> When I came on, I was mostly handling software and OS stuff so I didn't have
> my hands inside the machines too often.  I do remember seeing the thick
> cables though and having to work around them.  One "router rack" with 4
> O2000 racks on each side with the heavy HIPPI cable interconnects.  So 9
> racks total per row, times 48 rows deep.   LOTS of cable.
> 
> Later we experimented with the Origin 3200 line, testing R bricks (routers
> for the ccNUMA interconnects) vs Myranet and such.   Good times.

Wow! Origin 2000 was 16 CPU per rack, so 9 racks times 16 is 144, 144
cpus times 48 rows is 6912 cpus. No wonder they used HIPPI, I believe that
Origin 2000, with the last routers, maxed out at 512 cpus. 

Just to clarify, HIPPI and NUMAlink are two seperate things. I imagine
that NUMAlink connected up Origin 2000 compute nodes into larger 
cc-NUMA systems, those larger systems then must have been interconnected 
with HIPPI. 

I have some fiber HIPPI gear for my SGI gear and, one of these days, I'll get 
around to setting it up.

Jody