KJ.
Here is an interesting perspective on clustering from Bull.
I think VIA is not a physical interconnect, it is a protocol
for clustering.
>>Early clusters relied on standard LAN technology and inexpensive adapters. In contrast, all MPPs use proprietary interconnect schemes (e.g., HPS for IBM's RS/6000 SP, BYnet for NCR's WorldMark, Mesh for Pyramid-SNI), and the interconnect is presented as the value of the system. As explained earlier, however, such development adds considerably to the cost (and thus the price) of the system without providing significant performance advantages today, because the limiting factor is the software overhead, not the hardware. Moreover, with the fantastic progress of standard interconnect technology such as Fibre Channel or ATM, this difference also is vanishing. We expect this trend toward the use of standard interconnect interfaces to become generally accepted in the next couple of years with the introduction of VIA products.<<
www-frec.bull.com
More from IBM.
rs6000.ibm.com
Regards
Louie
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