|
The communication performance seen by applications, running in AIX® cluster nodes and communicating
through the SP™ Switch or SP Switch2, is comprised of a number of elements. The SP Switch and SP
Switch2 provide the base communications performance capability. The performance characteristics of the
SP Switch and SP Switch2 adapters in the node, and the time the node takes to process the communication
protocol stack, determine how much of the SP Switch and SP Switch2 performance capability can be
sustained during application-to-application communication. The time for processing the communication
protocol stack is, in turn, determined by the software path length and the performance characteristics of the
processor.
This document presents the performance capabilities of both the SP Switch and SP Switch2 fabrics and
their adapters. We also present actual application performance measurements. The software path length in
processing communication protocol stacks is beyond the scope of this document and is not discussed.
In this document, switch refers to any switch type and adapter refers to any adapter type, unless a specific
switch or adapter is named.
|
