Microcontrollers/ASICs v. General Purpose Microprocessors -- WAS: Opteron Vs. Athlon X2

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 10:55 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> I use one for VLAN isolation for each host, and because 
> it has native intelligence so it can run diagnostics 
> and be remotely administered. For Fast Ethernet, Layer 3
> switches are not really expensive.

But you can create VLANs on most layer-2 switches too, you'll just
(typically) need a router for them outside the switch.

[ NOTE:  I'm purposely using this as an example of something I do _not_
agree with -- I agree with you. ;-]

> Why would one want to use TCP/IP on a LAN storage network when
> naked Ethernet frames would do nicely?

Oh no, not the CoRAID marketing again (sigh).  @-p

When CoRAID's AoE stack is feature complete and matching against
typical, enterprise SAN, please come back.  ;->

> But for the failure rate (requiring failover) and power requirements
> there are no reasons I'm aware of. Modern TCP/IP stacks can achieve
> wire speed on 10 GBit Ethernet -- assuming you don't need the CPU 
> for much else.

Really?  I was not aware at all.  I didn't realize you could push
6,000,000 frames (1,000,000 jumbo frames) and the CPU-interconnect could
handle it.

> Most reasons why software RAID works so well is because cheap
> CPU and large memory are commodity, and a spare is a lot cheaper
> and easier to find.

What's another $100-300 when you're talking a server costing $1,500+
already?  Especially when you have many systems, so a few spares are
available?


-- 
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org
http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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