Tests at ORNL 11/6-27/95

These results are from preliminary tests.

Configuration

One GigaNet,Inc ATM board installed in rogue.css.ornl.gov, a 4-node (MP3/NIC B), 128 MB/node, (can run either NIC A or NIC B kernel and one service node Paragon. OSF 1.3.0. New libatm.a (10/23/95) Second ATM board in Intel's XPE (mpdot1.ccs.ornl.gov), 16-node GP/NIC A, same software.

Sandia has provided a FORE ATM switch with OC12 and OC3 interfaces and an AT&T EMMI .

11/11/95. mpdot1 gets new (production) ATM board.

11/17/95. Both Paragons now running OSF 1.3.3

ATM benchmarking

• 11/13/95. Getting better throughput by aligning buffers on 8K boundary, but higher transmit rate is making blast transmitter more likely to overrun receiver. Two-way blast (duplex tests) very lossy even at small packet size.
• 11/14/95. NX has optimum bandwidth with messages that are multiples of 32 (cache line), here is a plot of ATM bandwidth, stepping the message length by 4, note the period is 96 bytes (a multiple of cache line (32) and ATM cell payload (48)).

ATM vs HiPPI/Ether tests

• 11/14/95, Paragon-to-Paragon network bandwdith plots comparing Ethernet and HiPPI (albeit, TCP/IP) with AAL5/ATM.

PVM/ATM application tests

• 11/14/95. Sandia does initial PCTH runs.

IP/ATM and ATM video tests

The test configuration for IP over ATM and ATM video is depicted here.

• 11/8/95, Successful ATM video tests (AT&T Emmi (Q=25,800 KBs) and Paragon) Prohaska provided software traffic shaping so the EMMI wasn't overrun by the Paragon's AAL5 frames. The shaping involved breaking the AAL5 frame into clusters of cells. No additional intercell delay was required. Clusters of more than 14 cells would not be received successfully by the EMMI.
• 11/10/95, Sucessful initial ATM/IP tests to DEC Alpha/ATM over switch.
• 11/20/95, Sucessful ATM video tests (AT&T Emmi (Q=98,6 MBs) and Paragon) Traffic shaping still required, though at the higher video rate, clusters of at least 4 cells (and no more than 14) were required. Some experiments with video capture/playback to/from disk and encryption using stream ciphers.