[gmx-users] Switches

[David van der Spoel]

On Mon, 4 Feb 2002, Andrea Bernini wrote:

>Dear all,
>         we are planning to build an 8 nodes cluster computer running
>Linux dedicated to GROMACS MD runs. In your experience, which fast
>ethernet switches (e.g. in terms of low latency) and ethernet adapters
>available on the market are better suitable for this very specific purpose?
Maybe it is useful to check the Beowulf mailing lists (www.beowulf.org)
Gigabit is usually not recommended with Linux, but a good backplane (i.e. 
high bandwidth on the switch) could make some difference since in 
principle all communication in gromacs happens simultaneously.

If you want to do parallel runs only, it may be worthwhile to in invest in 
myrinet or scali (see www.gromacs.org for benchmarks). Otherwise you will 
probably get more performace from 4 dual processor machines than 8 single 
processors.

Groeten, David.
________________________________________________________________________
Dr. David van der Spoel, 	Biomedical center, Dept. of Biochemistry
Husargatan 3, Box 576,  	75123 Uppsala, Sweden
phone:	46 18 471 4205		fax: 46 18 511 755
spoel at xray.bmc.uu.se	spoel at gromacs.org   http://zorn.bmc.uu.se/~spoel
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