Per our discussion Thursday night re: what size PCI-Express slots are present in the latest and greatest Sun kit, I got curious and went wandering through SunSolve. Here are the results:
Sun X4600 (16-core, 4U): This is the biggest compute node they've got - 8-way, dual-core Opterons and 128GB of RAM. It's got 6 x PCIe slots(1); all are physically x8. 4 have x8 signals, two have x4(2). Sun X4500 (4-core, 4U): This is the storage server with 2-way, dual-core Opterons, 16GB of RAM and up to *24TB* of storage in 4U. I couldn't find any docs on SunSolve for it, but it doesn't have any PCIe slots anyway. Sun X4200 (4-core, 2U): This is nice compute node with 2-way, dual-core Opterons and 16GB of RAM. No PCIe, though. Sun X4100 (4-core, 1U): When compared with the X4200, this seems to be the better choice for processor/unit rack space, at the expense of two disks. Again, no PCIe. Sun X2100 (2-core, 1U): This is the smallest of their Opteron boxen. It's got a 1-way, dual-core Opteron and 8GB of RAM. For compute density purposes, it doesn't seem to be particularly efficient for Performance/Watt/Unit Rack Space/Dollar. It, however *does* have a single, x8-signalled PCIe slot(3). It's on a 1U riser, and SunSolve doesn't have a good photo of the riser itself(4), so I couldn't tell whether it's physically an x16 or an x8 (I'm assuming x8, but...). The most compelling reason for Sun to move into PCIe from PCI-X is the vastly greater bandwidth available through even an x8 slot. Thus, the availability of *dual port* 4Gb FC-AL HBAs (still only needs an x4 signal) and 4x (10Gb/s) Infiniband HBAs (again, only req. x4 signalling) from Sun - awesome! Hopefully with the advent of SGI-esque render clusters (e.g. the nVidia Quadro Plex(5)), Sun will replace all of the currently PCIe-less boxen with more future-proof models (x16 slots anybody?). For now though, no x16 slots on Sun servers. Sorry Sebastian. 1) http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/Systems/SunFireX4600/components.html (note the photo 3/4 of the way down). 2) http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/Systems/SunFireX4600/spec.html 3) http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/Systems/SunFireX2100_R/spec.html 4) http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/Systems/SunFireX2100_R/components.html (again, note the photo 3/4 of the way down). 5) http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_34527.html -- If UNIX doesn't have the solution you have the wrong problem. UNIX is simple, but it takes a genius to understand it's simplicity. _______________________________________________ RLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.rlug.org/mailman/listinfo/rlug
