4 ms·
This is starting to change a bit because of things like the DPUs that companies are making. Basically it's an intelligent PCI-e <=> network bridge that lets yo
by simcop2387 6y ago
This is starting to change a bit because of things like the DPUs that companies are making. Basically it's an intelligent PCI-e <=> network bridge that lets you emulate/share PCI-e devices on the host while the actual hardware (NVMe storage, GPU, etc.) is located elsewhere. This lets you reconfigure the host in software without having to physically change the hardware in the servers itself. It also lets you change the way you have things in the server rack since everything doesn't need to be able to physically fit into every other server case.
EDIT: informative article about DPUs, https://www.servethehome.com/what-is-a-dpu-a-data-processing-unit-quick-primer/ https://www.servethehome.com/what-is-a-dpu-a-data-processing...
- ithkuil 6y agoThe linked article states that DPUs behave like a PCIe device implementing the NVME protocol but instead of directly connected storage it can forward requests over network (fabric) via NVMeoF. This doesn't look like a generic PCIe over network/fabric bridge. Did I misunderstand you or did I fail to locate that information in the linked article?
- wmf 6y agoIt's specifically NVMe over network, not PCIe over network.
- simcop2387 6y agoThe Fungible DPU mentioned in the article is capable of it, it's only very briefly mentioned in that article but it does link to a more in depth article about it. https://www.servethehome.com/fungible-f1-dpu-for-distributed-compute/ https://www.servethehome.com/fungible-f1-dpu-for-distributed...