UDP/IP Instead Of TCP/IP

[AaronONE]

Good Day,

Is it possible to configure Intel MPI to send/receive messages using udp/ip instead of tcp/ip?

Are there any documentation that shows the timing for message sizes between using either a 1gb or 10gb ethernet+switch in tcp/ip ethernet? I understand that using a 10gb ethernet+switch will be faster. But I am trying to find out the performance increase vs cost.

Intel Direct Ethernet Transport allows messages sent/received using ethernet without tcp/ip. Is there a Windows version of it? Or is it that it cannot be implemented in Windows?

Thanks.

[Dmitry_K_Intel2 · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Well, UDP protocol is not supported.

10 Gb vs 1Gb on our cluster and HPL benchmark shows ~2.5X improvement in case of no OpenMP threads and more than 10X if OpenMP_num_threads = number of cores.
So, the performance increase depends on the application itself and amount of data need to be transferred.

It seems to me that there is no Windows version of DET and I would not expect it in the nearest future.

Regards!
Dmitry

[AaronONE]

With regards to the udp protocol, is it possible that I write my own udp socket and then configure Intel MPI to use it? If yes, can you point to me any link/hint on doing that?

Actually, I would like to see whether there is any improvement achieved by Intel MPI in using udp.

One more question is that, in a 1gb ethernet network, a switch is connecting 4 blade servers. How much difference will there be if a 1 gb switch or a 4 gb switch is used respectively?

I read an article before about network switches that maintain full line speed. What is the difference between these switches and the 1gb/4gb switches? Are there any performance benefits? How to know that which switches support full line speed?

Thanks very much for your swift response.

[Dmitry_K_Intel2]

To be honest we've never tested Intel MPI Library with different switches and cannot recommend anything. And of cause you understand that bandwidth depends on the workload. Will you get performance benefits using 4Gb switch - nobody can answer until you test performance of your application with both switches.

Regards!
Dmitry