[openib-general] RDMA enabled NICs- newbie

[Roger Heflin]

Ian Brown wrote:
> Thanks all.
> I indeed fround that
> http://www.ammasso.com/ responds with
> "There is no website configured at this address."
> while
> http://www.chelsio.com/
> does exist.
> 
> Is there a reason why manufacturers will refrain from
> producing RDMA ? (I mean , are there better technologies
> which are a substitute for RDMA for ethernet ?)
> Regards,
> IB


I kind of think that the market is too small to support
a company making a card that is at best just slightly cheaper
than things like Infiniband, and Myrinet, and is actually
slower than the Infiniband and Myrinet.

Consider how many cards one has to sell to pay a single
engineers salary when you are at best making $100-$150 a
card over production costs.    The numbers don't look that
good to me, and consider that previous to Ammasso and Chelsio
there have been a long string of companies producing accelerated
nitch network cards of various types (going back as far as the
early 90's), and all of them have failed to get enough
market share to stay in business.   About the only thing
that makes one of these companies viable is being bought
out by someone large enough to support the needed funding.

Level 5 is making accelerated ethernet cards, I believe most
of the acceleration is in software in some manner (kernel bypass),
and I don't know if their card could be made to do rdma.

                          Roger