[Gluster-devel] really interesting interconnect

[Christopher Hawkins]

I'm wondering if anyone on the gluster team has heard of a project called
GAMMA?

It's a communication framework that runs over gig-e and reduces latency to

near infiniband levels (reported at 9.6 microseconds). :-0 I just heard of

it today and I'm wondering if it would be a candidate for inclusion with
gluster. It has a published specification and it seems to me that it's
similar to infiniband... It doesn't do IP at all, and in fact requires a
separate IP network for certain overhead communications. But given the huge
price premium for IB networks, I would think that a GAMMA translator would
put GlusterFS way over the top as a price to performance leader in the super
storage market. We're talking about getting serious I/O out of plain old gig
ethernet! Opinions?

The GAMMA project is here: http://www.disi.unige.it/project/gamma/

And the article where I read about it was on Linux Magazine's site:

http://www.linux-mag.com/launchpad/business-class-hpc/build/3507 

The excerpt that matters: 

"For HPC clusters it is worth mentioning that kernel by-pass is available
for GigE. The GAMMA or Genoa Active Message MAchine is a project maintained
by Giuseppe Ciaccio of Dipartimento di Informatica s Scienze
dell'Informazione in Italy. It is a project to develop an Ethernet kernel
bypass capability for some Intel and Broadcom Ethernet NICs. MPI/GAMMA is
also available. As we will see in Table One, GAMMA can provide a low latency
for some GigE NICs."

To give credit where credit is due, the author is Jeffrey B. Layton, Ph.D.,
and it was a great article about the merits of various interconnects. 

Thanks guys, looking forward to your thoughts!

Chris