Did I miss something? 3 gigabit Ethernet really soon?

On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:55:49 -0600, Lewis wrote
(in article <gkreme-D0F3DA.12554922022008 DeleteThis @news.giganews.com>):

> In article <0001HW.C3E45645026FE264F01846D8 DeleteThis @news.verizon.net>,
> Randy Howard <randyhoward DeleteThis @FOOverizonBAR.net> wrote:
>
>> Weirdly enough, 10 gigabit ethernet has been around several years, just
>> not on desktops or home routers very often.
>
> Well, because it's largely pointless. Gigabit ethernet exceeds the
> speed of most people's hard drives...

And if all anyone did was copy files back ad forth on their home
network, that would be a complete explanation. :)

The real issue is that for most users, gigabit ethernet is already many
times faster than their broadband connection, so it's not the
bottleneck.

10GigE has applications in computer clusters, data centers, etc.

Link aggregation of gigE connections makes for a much lower cost
solution in many cases so far. GigE wasn't really cheap until it
started showing up in low-cost desktop chipsets. I suspect the same
thing will be true eventually with 10GigE as well.

Perhaps widespread use of ssd storage and RAID solutions will help
drive a need for it, but I/O has been lagging badly behind cpu
horsepower for ages.


--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those
who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw
 >> Stay informed about: Did I miss something? 3 gigabit Ethernet really soon? 

In article <0001HW.C3E4E196029089BFF01846D8.TakeThisOut@news.verizon.net>,
Randy Howard <randyhoward.TakeThisOut@FOOverizonBAR.net> wrote:

> On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:55:49 -0600, Lewis wrote
> (in article <gkreme-D0F3DA.12554922022008.TakeThisOut@news.giganews.com>):
>
> > In article <0001HW.C3E45645026FE264F01846D8.TakeThisOut@news.verizon.net>,
> > Randy Howard <randyhoward.TakeThisOut@FOOverizonBAR.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Weirdly enough, 10 gigabit ethernet has been around several years, just
> >> not on desktops or home routers very often.
> >
> > Well, because it's largely pointless. Gigabit ethernet exceeds the
> > speed of most people's hard drives...
>
> And if all anyone did was copy files back ad forth on their home
> network, that would be a complete explanation. :)
>
> The real issue is that for most users, gigabit ethernet is already many
> times faster than their broadband connection, so it's not the
> bottleneck.
>
> 10GigE has applications in computer clusters, data centers, etc.
>
> Link aggregation of gigE connections makes for a much lower cost
> solution in many cases so far. GigE wasn't really cheap until it
> started showing up in low-cost desktop chipsets. I suspect the same
> thing will be true eventually with 10GigE as well.
>
> Perhaps widespread use of ssd storage and RAID solutions will help
> drive a need for it, but I/O has been lagging badly behind cpu
> horsepower for ages.

I first came across Gigabit Ethernet when it was still expensive, but in
the context of a data centre mirroring multiple disk arrays, both
locally and with remote data centres.

--
Paul Sture

Sue's OpenVMS bookmarks:
http://eisner.encompasserve.org/~sture/ovms-bookmarks.html
 >> Stay informed about: Did I miss something? 3 gigabit Ethernet really soon? 

In <paul.sture.nospam-C724F0.06134826022008.DeleteThis@mac.sture.ch>, P. Sture wrote:

> I first came across Gigabit Ethernet when it was still expensive, but in
> the context of a data centre mirroring multiple disk arrays, both
> locally and with remote data centres.

I saw my first gigabit switch when working on a beowulf cluster of linux
boxes in the late 1990s. I really was just looking over the shoulder of
the person putting it together. So I can't claim any expertise in that
area. I still don't grok how compilers and coders can really make use of
parallel CPUs.

The data that the machines needed to share over gigabit ether was
supposedly in memory and not to the disks, so this was considered worth
it.

Speaking of disks and returning vaguely to topic, when Apple says "server
grade" hard disks in the TimeCapsule, does anyone know what that really
means?

-j

--
Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/
I rarely read top-posted, over-quoting or HTML postings.
http://improve-usenet.org/
 >> Stay informed about: Did I miss something? 3 gigabit Ethernet really soon? 

In article
<alpine.OSX.1.00.0802261507140.17240.RemoveThis@hagrid.ewd.goldmark.org>, Jeffrey
Goldberg <nobody.RemoveThis@goldmark.org> wrote:

> Speaking of disks and returning vaguely to topic, when Apple says "server
> grade" hard disks in the TimeCapsule, does anyone know what that really
> means?

it's an enterprise grade drive that's certified for 24/7 operation as
well as supporting the f_fullfsync command so that the integrity of the
data is maintained.
 >> Stay informed about: Did I miss something? 3 gigabit Ethernet really soon? 

In article
<alpine.OSX.1.00.0802261507140.17240 RemoveThis @hagrid.ewd.goldmark.org>, Jeffrey
Goldberg <nobody RemoveThis @goldmark.org> wrote:

> In <paul.sture.nospam-C724F0.06134826022008 RemoveThis @mac.sture.ch>, P. Sture wrote:
>
> > I first came across Gigabit Ethernet when it was still expensive, but in
> > the context of a data centre mirroring multiple disk arrays, both
> > locally and with remote data centres.
>
> I saw my first gigabit switch when working on a beowulf cluster of linux
> boxes in the late 1990s. I really was just looking over the shoulder of
> the person putting it together. So I can't claim any expertise in that
> area. I still don't grok how compilers and coders can really make use of
> parallel CPUs.

It is pretty straight-forward. Many programs, which begin life as a
single thread of execution, spawn one or more new processes or threads,
which have their own threads of execution (they execute different parts
of the same program or a different program altogether). This allows a
program to be doing work even if one thread of execution gets blocked
(stalled) waiting for some slow operation like user input or a disk
read. This process is called "multi-tasking" and has been part of
computer architecture for decades
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking>).

This effect proved to be very valuable in speeding up programs and
making them more responsive even when there was only one processor. For
example, it is common for programs that have a GUI interface (like most
Mac programs) to have one thread for handling GUI events and other
threads for doing computations (the actual work) or I/O. This avoids
the beachball effect while actual computation is going on.

If the computer has multiple processors, then the system can run
separate processes (threads) on separate processors simultaneously.
This provides even more of a speedup. The operating system generally
takes care of the scheduling, so programmers don't have to worry about
making sure separate threads run on different CPUs.

All of the CPUs can access the same memory, so it is easy for the OS to
run threads on any available CPU.

A single program with multiple threads does need to arrange that the
threads cooperate in some way. That is usually the difficult part in
creating a multi-tasking program. But the problem existed long before
there were multi-processor systems, and lots of different methods for
what is called "interprocess communication" have been developed: shared
memory, messages, sockets, FIFOs, pipes, semaphores, mutexes, etc.

--
Jim Gibson

Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services
----------------------------------------------------------
** SPEED ** RETENTION ** COMPLETION ** ANONYMITY **
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.usenet.com
 >> Stay informed about: Did I miss something? 3 gigabit Ethernet really soon?