Myricom Myrinet M3-SW16-8E

Myricom Myrinet M3-SW16-8E ... These Myrinet switch line cards can be used to build economical, high-degree, GbE cluster switches, or switches that can be connected to both Myrinet and GbE hosts.

The GbE ports of the M3-SW16-8E line card are 1000BASE-T on RJ-45 connectors for Cat-5 Ethernet cables. The GbE ports are full-duplex only and Gigabit-Ethernet only. There is no half-duplex mode of operation or speed negotiation to 100BASE-T or 10BASE-T. The line card includes a 16-port Myrinet switch with 8 Myrinet System Area Network links on the connector to the backplane, and can be used in all of the same configurations as the Myrinet-fiber M3-SW16-8F line card.

The conversion between Ethernet-emulation packets on a Myrinet and GbE packets is accomplished by a Lanai-XM chip on each GbE port. The physical-level conversion is a feature of the multiprotocol port of the Lanai XM. The data-link-level conversion is accomplished by firmware that executes on the RISC inside the Lanai XM. The protocol-conversion firmware is loaded into the memories of the Lanai-XM chips during the line-card initialization. This firmware can be upgraded through an M3-M monitoring line card. In addition to its protocol-conversion functions, the firmware participates in Myrinet mapping.