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NVIDIA Confirms It's Acquiring Mellanox

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  • #21
    Originally posted by numacross View Post

    I'm replying to you via a Mellanox LAN card Granted they start at 10GbE, but it's 2019!
    *old high-bandwith networking card for datacenters

    Since now datacenters are migrating to bigger and better, (like 40Gbit or even 100Gbit), these things are now available as "used" stock all over the usual channels (ebay and others), with the mesh/interconnect or even fibre as cheap as a friggin Gbit ethernet and sub-100 for a dual-10Gbit RJ45 (i.e. normal ethernet cable) card.

    It's completely insane.

    Btw, just throwing it out there, the first affordable "desktop 10Gbit switch" is also arrived https://mikrotik.com/product/crs305_1g_4s_in
    You get a fanless switch with 4 SFP+ ports capable of 10Gbit for less than 150$, which means that if you stay on fiber SFP+ modules or even just use the short-range SFP+ cables you can get away with an astonishingly cheap home 10Gb setup.

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    • #22
      Originally posted by starshipeleven View Post
      *old high-bandwith networking card for datacenters
      Which is still within the definition of LAN But you're correct, it's an old Connect-X 2. However it is still supported and works with the latest Windows driver, for example.

      Originally posted by starshipeleven View Post
      Since now datacenters are migrating to bigger and better, (like 40Gbit or even 100Gbit), these things are now available as "used" stock all over the usual channels (ebay and others), with the mesh/interconnect or even fibre as cheap as a friggin Gbit ethernet and sub-100 for a dual-10Gbit RJ45 (i.e. normal ethernet cable) card.

      It's completely insane.
      I'm not complaining, the more high quality hardware at normal prices the better.

      Originally posted by starshipeleven View Post
      Btw, just throwing it out there, the first affordable "desktop 10Gbit switch" is also arrived https://mikrotik.com/product/crs305_1g_4s_in
      You get a fanless switch with 4 SFP+ ports capable of 10Gbit for less than 150$, which means that if you stay on fiber SFP+ modules or even just use the short-range SFP+ cables you can get away with an astonishingly cheap home 10Gb setup.
      Nice, I might use something like that when I need to expand my current setup, thanks.

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      • #23
        Originally posted by brad0 View Post

        NVIDIA just turned a great company and great product into worthless garbage. RIP Mellanox. Intel would have been a much better company to purchase them.
        If Intel purchased Mellanox, that would have been incredibly problematic. Mellanox merged with Voltaire in 2010. Intel purchased QLogic's InfiniBand technology back in 2012. So since then, there's only been 2 InfiniBand vendors. Oracle picked it up in 2016... but with their hardware limitations, they're not a player.
        If Intel purchased Mellanox, they would control most of InfiniBand and Intel's own alternative OmniPath.

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        • #24
          Originally posted by Gusar View Post
          The chip got reverse-engineered at some point, resulting in the in-kernel forcedeth driver. Nvidia then dropped their proprietary driver and started contributing to forcedeth.
          Adding to that, their proprietary network driver used to be a shitshow, nobody wanted to use it once forcedeth was developed.

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          • #25


            A few months later:

            Originally posted by phoronix
            Phoronix: NVIDIA May Be Trying To Prevent Mellanox Consumer NICs From Being Used In Data Centers

            This driver download license agreement for the Mellanox consumer drivers mention, "No Datacenter Deployment. The SOFTWARE is not licensed for datacenter deployment."

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            • #26
              Originally posted by Slithery View Post
              I can see the support threads now...

              'How do I install the Nvidia proprietary drivers needed to use my new NIC'.
              Remember nforce? It hppened already, though most of those drivers were eventually reverse engineered. Some of them like the network driver took years to become stable.

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              • #27
                Sad really unless NVidia sees the light with respect to networking and open source.

                As for this tech tech not showing up in GPU’s, I believe the opposite!! There are many ways NVidia could leverage high speed interconnects on GPUs. I really don’t see a decline in the demand for higher performance out of GPUs. Thus it is easy to see NVidia wanting new interconnect fabrics.

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                • #28
                  Originally posted by starshipeleven View Post
                  Unless the Shield suddenly needs a 40Gbit fiber port (hint: it won't), then Mellanox won't be involved.
                  40Gb/s? Meh, that's so 2010. Today we're deploying 200Gb/s and talking about 400Gb/s.

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                  • #29
                    Originally posted by numacross View Post
                    Which is still within the definition of LAN But you're correct, it's an old Connect-X 2. However it is still supported and works with the latest Windows driver, for example.
                    How are these Connect-X 2 cards working out for you? Share with us. I've been hoovering the buy button a few times lately wondering "I can haz two 10 gigabit cards and a cable for $50? should I just do it already?" Only minor draw-back I see is that the cards require that you use a x8 slot for them. Apart from that minor detail.. seems like a steal?

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                    • #30
                      Welp. That was a sudden shock. Guess our newer deployments will start looking at <n>00gig Ethernet instead of Infiniband. Fully expect NVIDIA to close this down and put data slurp in their new EULA, plus signed firmware and a special "enterprise" license you have to pay annually for.

                      RIP Infiniband. Your were a trusted companion on our HPC journey for so many years.

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