SAS/SATA networking?

A

Argher

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 23, 2004
Messages
374
I had this thought today...networking via SAS or SATA as a speedy, short range networking tool akin to firewire's use. SATA in particular is ubiquitous, and offers 3gb/s of bandwidth currently.

I know SAS has SAS extenders, which act somewhat like ethernet switches. I also would think that you could theoretically program a driver for SATA that would enable it to use TCP/IP rather than I/O functions.

Thoughts?
 
Why reinvent the wheel? Copper or fiber networking works extremely well using TCP/IP. Besides, most of the time the devices are far apart, not close together.
 
yeah, a 10 Gb iscsi will be faster than what you will probably ever need, and everything is already written for it.
 
My understanding of iSCSI is it's exactly what I'm thinking of..in reverse. It's transferring I/O instructions over TCP/IP (ethernet et al). I'm looking to transfer TCP/IP over traditional I/O interfaces (SATA/SAS or what have you).

Am I mistaken?
 
Let me ask you this... anything over a wire is only as fast as its weakest link. If you are running an all Gbps network and the device is on a 100mb segment, what is the point of all that speed?

Also, a gigabit ethernet is not going to give you the peak thoroughput of the actual device. To me it is overkill.

We run a gigabit ethernet here at work with several NAS's and we don't have any issues running RAID 5 SCSI setups.
 
Perhaps I should clarify...

What I'm thinking of this as, is a short-distance interconnect for the purpose of HPC, not as a general purpose networking alternative. As you may be aware, HPC applications desire the lowest latency, highest bandwidth available. I'm thinking of this as a possible alternative to the more expensive Myrinet/Infiniband technologies for node to node application, not as a replacement for gigabit ethernet.

If the bandwidth is there, and SATA will otherwise go unused...why not tap into it, if at all possible?
 
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