NETWORK ADAPTER INFORMATION

10/100/1000 BaseT Gigabit Adapter
The standard network interconnect, every motherboard manufacturer integrates a Gigabit Ethernet or dual Gigabit Ethernet adapter on their motherboard. The cost of Gigabit Network Switches have dropped to the point where the cost per port is less than $30. Gigabit Ethernet uses TCP/IP for message passing and network traffic. This widely used network standard allows for excellent price / performance ratio. PSSC Labs Beowulf Linux clusters, through kernel and network driver optimization, are able to achieve up to 800 Mb/sec throughput performance. Latency measurements leave something to be desired. If latency is a major concern for your calculation, Gigabit Ethernet may not the best network interconnect.

10GigE 10/100/1000/10000 Network Adapter
Next evolution of standard gigabit networking, 10GigE network adapters offer excellent TCP / IP performance. Throughput rates are significantly higher than gigabit networking. Latency rates are not nearly as low as Infiniband networks and therefore 10GigE network adapters are very good for file server performance but not necessarily high performance computing.

Infiniband Adapter
A relatively new entrant into the network interconnect arena. Inifiband (IB) is developed by a consortium of organization that must adhere to an IB standard. Performance results from Infiniband are impressive. Measured throughput for the single channel IB card is nearly 4.0 Gb/sec. Latency is also very good, around 8.0 µs. Newer versions of IB cards should increase throughput and lower latency.