Myricom, the company that pioneered high-performance cluster interconnect, launched its Myri-10G family of products in 2005.  Myri-10G is not only a fourth generation of Myrinet, the very successful High Performance Computing (HPC) “specialty network” that Myricom created and has been shipping since 1994, but is also a performance-optimized implementation of mainstream 10-Gigabit Ethernet, both NICs and switches.

Myricom labeled Myri-10G as “a convergence at 10-Gigabit/s data rates of Myrinet technology with Ethernet.”  An insightful pundit amusingly called Myri-10G “10-Gigabit Ethernet with special sauce.”  Marketing phrases and sound bites aside, Myri-10G products immediately won customers, some for conventional 10-Gigabit Ethernet networking applications, some for HPC applications, and some for special applications such as IPTV video streaming.  Why?  Myri-10G Network Interface Cards (NICs) deliver uncompromising, wire-speed performance – a Myricom focus and tradition – at an affordable price, and are fully interoperable with the 10-Gigabit Ethernet products of other companies.  Myri-10G switches scale economically to thousands of ports, a capability not offered by the traditional Ethernet-switch vendors.

Myri-10G dual-protocol NICs

Myri-10G NICs are the fastest, lowest cost, and lowest power 10-Gigabit Ethernet NICs on the market today, and they are also great 10-Gigabit Myrinet NICs. Myri-10G NICs are unique in the 10-Gigabit Ethernet NIC market in being internally programmable, and capable of kernel-bypass operation.

For conventional TCP/IP and UDP/IP operation, the processors and firmware in the NIC are used for highly effective stateless offloads, resulting in wire-speed throughput with low host-CPU utilization. Myricom supplies Ethernet drivers with associated firmware for Linux, Windows (WHQL certified), Solaris, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and VMware ESX.

Myri-10G NICs are available as standard PCI Express add-in cards with a choice of 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports: 10GBase-CX4, 10GBase-SR and 10GBase-LR (either XFP or SFP+ transceivers), SFP+ Direct Attach, or XAUI over QSFP-terminated copper or fiber cables.  Myri-10G NICs are also available in special form factors for blades, including the IBM BladeCenter H.  Although the network ports adhere to 10-Gigabit Ethernet Physical (PHY, layer-1) standards, Myri-10G NICs are capable with different firmware of supporting either Ethernet or Myrinet network protocols at the Data Link level (layer 2).

Optional Myri-10G software distributions

In addition to the bundled 10-Gigabit Ethernet drivers for conventional TCP/IP and UDP/IP operation, Myricom supplies optional, firmware-accelerated, software distributions for low-latency, low-host-CPU-load, kernel-bypass operation of Myri-10G NICs over either 10-Gigabit Ethernet or 10-Gigabit Myrinet networks, most notably:

• MX (Myrinet Express) for MPI and Sockets communication, and for cluster file systems.  MPI and Sockets middleware is included in the MX software distribution, and alternative middleware that operates directly over MX is available from other sources.
• Video Pump™ for UDP streaming of IPTV video at ultra-low host-CPU utilization.
• DBL (Datagram Bypass Layer) for low-latency UDP/IP communication.
• Sniffer10G™ for wire-speed 10-Gigabit Ethernet packet capture at high packet rates.
• FCoE  (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) firmware acceleration for the Linux Open-FCoE driver.

• Physical links and cabling are 10-Gigabit Ethernet, copper and fiber

• At the Physical level (PHY, layer-1), the ports of Myricom's custom Myri-10G chips are XAUI, per IEEE 802.3ae. The data rate is 10+10 Gigabits per second, full-duplex. XAUI is readily converted to other 10-Gigabit Ethernet PHYs. The ports of current NIC and switch products are 10GBase-SR, 10GBase-LR, SFP+ Direct Attach, 10GBase-CX4, or XAUI. See this Guide to Myri-10G PHYs (pdf).
• At the Data-Link level (layer-2), the links may operate with either Ethernet or Myrinet protocols.

• NICs have processors and firmware, and dual-protocol network ports

• These PCI Express x8 NICs are firmware-controlled offload engines, just like all earlier Myrinet NICs.
• With the bundled 10-Gigabit Ethernet driver and firmware, the NIC operates as a protocol-offload 10-Gigabit Ethernet NIC.
• With the optional software distributions listed above, the NIC supports the same IP communication as with the Ethernet software, plus low-latency, kernel-bypass operation over either 10-Gigabit Myrinet or 10-Gigabit Ethernet networks.

• Switches are 10-Gigabit Myrinet internally

• Although Myri-10G leverages 10-Gigabit Ethernet technology at the link level, it retains the efficiency, simplicity, and scalability of Myrinet switching.
• These 10-Gigabit Myrinet switches and full-bisection Clos “Network in a box” products are similar except for data rates to Myrinet-2000 switches.
• Switch line cards provide either Ethernet or Myrinet external ports. The internal switching is Myrinet, with protocol conversion to external Ethernet ports.

2 October 2009