GigaNet Inc has become the latest company to enter the cluster interconnect market for NT servers and disks with system area network technology it is calling cLAN, for Cluster LAN. The technology brings it into competition with Compaq Computer Corp subsidiary Tandem’s ServerNet and Dolphin Interconnect Solutions Inc’s SCI scalable coherent interconnect products. GigaNet is a Bell Labs asynchronous transfer mode spin-off which re-emerged earlier this year after years of low-profile activity working with Intel Corp and the Sandia National Laboratories on the Paragon supercomputer (CI No 3,358). The company claims to have provided the technological basis for the Virtual Interface Architecture specification put together by Intel, Compaq Computer Corp and Microsoft Corp one year ago (CI No 3,141) – something that Tandem has also been heard to claim for ServerNet. GigaNet says that consequently, it is the first cluster interconnect technology with native VI 1.0 support in the hardware. It also suports the FC Level 0 Fibre Channel specification. Tandem says it plans to have a hardware implementation of VI once ServerNet 2 comes out by the end of the year. But GigaNet says that its interconnect already offers better throughput and latency than competitive offerings, saying that cLAN typically outperforms Tandem by 8% and Dolphin by 20%. The cLAN product comes in the form of a PCI card, currently undergoing beta testing, and a switch, due to enter beta testing by June. It is aimed at high- availability, networked I/O and scalable server installations where demands on the interconnect are large. Disk mirroring, for instance, can result in excessive interconnect latency results which can mean slow synchronization and recovery. cLAN includes features such as auto-configuration and predictive fault isolation to boost its reliability and availability. By decoupling the physical hardware from the logical system configuration, the cLAN technology is also said to simplify systems management tasks. Using the VI architecture, applications can bypass the operating system software for direct access to the network, and GigaNet claims less than eight microseconds latency from application to application. cLAN implements 1,024 virtual interfaces in the hardware in order to map the circuits or connections back to the applications. Others take an emulation approach to implementing the VI specification in software, resulting in a loss of performance, says the company. The 32 or 64-bit PCI-based cLAN Adapter, or GNN 1000 has a list price of $795, and should be available in the second quarter of the year. The eight port cLAN Interconnect Switch, or GNX 5000, lists for $6,250 and will be available in the third quarter. Concord, Massachusetts-based GigaNet say it will make some direct sales, but will mostly sell through OEMS and their partners. It promises announcements shortly, but in the meantime points to technology endorsements from the likes of IBM Corp, Intel Corp, Oracle Corp and Dell Computer Inc. The company is now concentrating full-time on clustering technology.
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