IBM Books

Administration Guide


Understanding the switch and the types supported

A switch provides a means for nodes to communicate with each other faster and more efficiently. For example, a switch can dramatically speed up TCP/IP, file transfers, remote procedure calls, and relational database functions. A switch consists of a switch assembly and the internal cables to support connections to the processor nodes. A switch can provide some or all, depending upon the type of switch, of the following capabilities:

|Switches provide enhanced scalable high performance communication |between processor nodes, most especially for parallel job execution. |The following switches are supported with PSSP 3.4: |

See the book IBM RS/6000 SP: Planning Volume 2, Control Workstation and Software Environment for more discussion of the supported switch configurations and rules or for the list of nodes that can connect to these switches.

Note:
Throughout this book use of the term SP switch (with the lower-case s in switch) applies generically to both the 8-port and 16-port SP Switch and to the SP Switch2. Exceptions are explicitly noted where applicable, like in discussions of system partitioning and clocking.


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