HP Fabric Clustering System for InfiniBand™ Topologies

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Summary
Performance of the 18-port cluster built from the two cascaded AB291A 12-port switches is equivalent
to or slightly better than that of the TS170.
HP has run numerous other High Performance Technical Computing applications on the same two
architectures to try to discover if there are flaws in the assumptions in this methodology. In all cases
tested, the result has shown that the performance yielded by the cascaded AB291A switches is
comparable to that of the TS170 for 18-node clusters.
Conclusions
HP recommends the use of the TS170 for cluster configurations consisting of more than 18 compute
nodes. HP recommends against cascading more than two AB291A 12-port switches together. HP
recommends the use of at least three (3) inter-switch links between each AB291A 12-port switch when
they are cascaded and that the cables be connected between the switch ports as described above.
Beyond ensuring the inter-switch cables are connected as described above, no customer configuration
of HP-UX software nor of switch parameters need be done. The Fabric Clustering System fabric is self-
configuring.