2010 Significant Efforts

17.8-Gbps Disk-to-Disk File Copies Achieved Via Workstations Costing Less Than $9,000

As part of plans to assess the throughput performance of wide-area file transfer applications, GSFC�s High End Computer Network Team specified and assembled workstations that individually costs less than $9,000 and are capable of over 17.8 gigabits per second (Gbps) disk-to-disk file copying. Each workstation consists of a 3.2-GHz single-processor (quad core) Intel Core i7 (Nehalem) with four HighPoint RocketRaid 4320 RAID disk controllers and a Myricom 2-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet network interface card in the PCIe Gen2 slots of a Asus P6T6 WS Revolution motherboard. Each RAID controller hosts eight Western Digital WD5001AALS 500-gigabyte disks. Over 17.8-Gbps disk-to-disk file-copying throughput between two of the workstations was measured using the nuttscp (www.nuttcp.net) file copying tool. While SSD technology is next to be investigated, parallelism of multiple cores and multiple streams is likely to be key to going to 40-Gbps and beyond, since individual cores are not getting significantly faster. Additional information is available.