This paper presents scalability and communication performance results for a cluster of PCs running Linux with the GM communication library, a cluster of PCs running Windows NT with the HPVM communication library, a Cray T3E-600, an IBM SP and a Cray Origin 2000. Both PC clusters were using a Myrinet network.Six communication tests using MPI routines were run for a variety of message sizes and numbers of processors. The tests were chosen to represent commonly-used communication patterns with low contention (a ping-pong between processors, a right shift, a binary tree broadcast and a synchronization barrier) to communication patterns with high contention (a na?ve broadcast and an all-to-all).For most of the tests the T3E provides the best performance and scalability. For an 8 byte message the NT cluster performs about the same as the T3E for most of the tests. For all the tests but one, the T3E, the Origin and the SP outperform the two clusters for the largest message size (10 Kbytes or 1 Mbyte).
Index Terms:
Parallel Computers; Communication Performance; Scalability; Cray Origin 2000; Cray T3E-600; IBM SP; Cluster of PCs Running Window NT; Cluster of PCs Running Linux; Myrinet Network; MPI Library
Citation:
Glenn R. Luecke, Bruno Raffin, James J. Coyle, "Comparing the Communication Performance and Scalability of a Linux and an NT Cluster of PCs, a Cray Origin 2000, an IBM SP and a Cray T3E-600," iwcc, pp.26, 1st IEEE Computer Society International Workshop on Cluster Computing, 1999
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