1 Introduction
This work took place as part of a study [Her01], whose goal was to sketch a distributed
and decentralized switching architecture. The Myricom
LANai processor was chosen
as the processing leaf node in this “dumb-core” high speed switching architecture ex-
periment. A partial goal for the thesis was to implement and benchmark embedded
LANai programs, refered to in the following by the acronym MCP, short for Myrinet
Control Program. This report describes the documentations, references and methods
used for this development.
Myrinet hardware was picked out because it fitted well in the envisioned archi-
tecture. Myrinet is composed of an over-simplified, dumb and performant core, with
potential “intelligence” at the edges of the network thanks to programmable processors.
Moreover, the openness of the technology and the availability of numerous documen-
tations, research papers and free software made this study possible.
Due to time and cost constraints, only common (“off the shelf”) hardware parts
were used: i.e. Myrinet
PCI interface cards with their on-board LANai processor. The
hosts for these cards were simple
IBM-compatible PCs running the Linux 2.2 kernel
(Debian operating system). The hosts acted as a necessary power supply for the
LANai,
and as a developpement and control platform thanks to and through the
PCI bus.
The section 2 gives the project background. It introduces Myricom’s hardware,
documentations available and existing software projects. The section 3 presents the
developed software and the design issues.
2 Context
At the very beginning of the Myrinet technology marketing, the software offer was
naturally poor. But thanks to a very open policy from Myricom [Myr] and the im-
mediate availability of a C compiler and a primitive myri
API library, many research
projects took advantage of the programmable feature of the network interfaces to ex-
periment miscellaneous ideas about high-performance computing. The software and
documentation offer grew up very quickly.
Today Myricom has achieved a full-featured, versatile, efficient and
GPL’ed [GPL]
low communication layer (
MCP + drivers + communication library) called GM, as well
as a
MPI layer above GM. They have given up since 1998 their original myriAPI. They
still actively maintain and distribute the
LANai-gcc backend (version 2.95.2). The re-
search activity around Myrinet communication layers has levelled off: aside
GM, only
a few projects are still maintained, generally because they are still used as a foundation
for higher level communication software. The “customers project page” on Myricom’s
web site [Myr] gives an exhaustive list of pointers.
2.1 Myricom hardware
Myricom has a complete Myrinet offer. At the heart of their products is their edge-
network processor, i.e. their successive
LANai generations, that they sell as an OEM
1
to some high-performance computer vendors. Their main retail product is their PCI
boards, now 64 bits/66 MHz capable. They also propose a smaller PMC (PCI Mezzanine
Card) variation.
1
Original Equipment Manufacturer
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