GSN Workshop

13 October 1998

Preparations

What is a workshop without working demonstrations ?

Preparations started on Friday 12 in the early morning when the electricians connected the different computers involved in the CERN computer centre to the mains supply.

Ready for the demonstrators and their material.

 

Silicon Graphics was the first to arrive and show GSN Interfaces and a Cable,

that were mounted into the Origin 2000 machines by Joe Gervais.

Igor Zacharov helped to install
the software.

 

Proudly the Genroco team shows there PCI to GNS Interfaces
(Chris Good, Brian Breuer, Carl Pick, Joel Nordman and Barbara Pick)

 

 

 

 

 

and installed the boards in a COMPAQ Alpha 4100 and a SUN Enterprise 450

And we had it all up and working in time.

The Workshop 13 October 1998

The workshop attracted many participants from outside CERN, altogether
we had: 8 People from Switzerland, 7 from the USA, 3 from France,
3 from Germany, 2 from Italy, 1 from England and 14 from CERN.

To listen to Greg Chesson

from Silicon

Graphics, who told us in a great presentation all the secrets about GSN,

 
the HIPPI 64OO specifications, the Sumac Chip, and the ST protocol.

 Followed by presentations from

 Carl Pick, Chairman of HNF (High performance Networking Forum )
and Chairman of Genroco

 Arie van Praag
Sorry, talking and photographing
at the same time is a bit difficult.

Alberto Alberto Guglielmi
from COMPAQ.

But here he is with
Carl Pick proudly holding
a GSN interface

John Freisinger
from ODS.

 The Demonstrations

 After so much good words every ones question was clearly in the air
" Would it Work"

Well Silicon Graphics showed, with a single stream socket service, some
interesting figures on the screen. Figures that are about equal to 99%
of the memory bandwidth of the machines used.

 And Genroco showed that the PCI Interfaces make it possible to have GSN Connections
between an COMPAQ ALPHA 4100 and a SUN Enterprise Server 450

 

Followed by many interesting discussions.

Chris Good from Genroco explaining the demonstration

Eric van der Bij, CERN, Brian Breuer, Genroco and Robert McLaren, CERN, discussing an GSN interface

This page was made at CERN by Arie Van Praag 17 - 10 - 1998.
Original pictures available on demand.