System Area Network (SAN) consisting of multiple hardware and software components, is an important component of supercomputing systems, often determining performance and scalability of large clusters. SAN components are characterized by custom hardware and software components, offering high bandwidth, low latency, and intelligent communication fabric for end applications using industry standard interfaces.
Over the last several years, CDAC has been developing indigenous system area network products called PARAMNet. A brief history of PARAMNet product family development is shown in the table below:
| Network | Data Speed | Co-Processor | Switch | Software Stack | Primary Deployment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PARAMNet-1 (beta) | 100 Mbits/sec | CCP-I | 8-port, 100 MBits/sec, Copper (DS Link) | CDAC Proprietary | PARAM 9000 |
| PARAMNet-1 | 400 Mbits/sec | CCP-II | 8-port, 400 Mbits/sec, Copper (DS Link) | CDAC Proprietary, Fast Sockets | PARAM 10000 |
| PARAMNet-2 | 2.5 Gbits/sec | CCP-III "Neo" | 16-port,2.5 Gbps, full duplex, Fiber | VIPL compliant | PARAM Padma |
| PARAMNet-3 more » | 10 Gbits/sec | Gemini | 48-port,10 Gbps/sec, full duplex Copper (CX-4) | DAPL compliant, SDP, TCP/IP | PARAM Yuva, PARAM Yuva-2 |
PARAMNet offers superior performance over commodity LANs using the following approach:
- Offload the transport layer functionality in hardware, by developing specialized "Communication Co-Processor" hardware (CCP). Such a processor effectively decouples communication tasks from host processor, providing much better performance and freeing the host processor for running user application. A packet processor based solution also allows for near wire speed useable bandwidth and low latency path for fast communications.
- Provide an extremely low latency, high throughput network cloud by developing specialized packet routing switches.
- Provide a standard set of application level interfaces so that the user applications can be made to run on the specialized hardware with minimal changes.
- Provide legacy support for TCP/IP based applications.
PARAMNet products are deployed by CDAC in its PARAM systems, as well as supplied commercially through its marketing division. PARAMNet has been deployed at various national and international sites.
Contact Us
Mr. Atul Bodas
HPC-Technologies Group
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
Pune University Campus,
Ganesh Khind,
Pune - 411 007 India.
Tel: +91-20-2570-4100 Ext. : 329
Fax: +91-20-2569-4004
Email: atulb[at]cdac[dot]in