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Re: hardware gzip accelerator cards
2006-03-11 14:42:22
--On March 11, 2006 2:17:50 PM +0100 Kai Zimmer <kai AT zimmer DOT net> wrote:
Hi all,
has anybody on the list experience with hardware gzip accelerator cards
(e.g. form indranetworks)? Are they of any use for amanda - or is the
disk-i/o the limiting factor? And how much are those (generally
pci-based) cards?
thanks,
Kai
Depends on the machine, most machines are disk I/O limited. For those that
aren't unless the card accellerates the gzip command it's worthless.
Usually they require special APIs to be implemented in a special (apache)
module in order to work. That's not to say you couldn't write a gzip
implementation using the card. It might not be any faster though, in fact
it might be slower. Modern CPUs are pretty damned fast. And because of
hte nature of compression, you need a GP proc to run it, and it's not very
likely you'll get anything faster than a newer Athlon or P4 on one of these
cards. Add to that the fact you have to load data to/from main memory,
over whatever bus (esp a slow PCI bus) you might actually be *slower*
running one of these cards.
They're meant to accellerate systems that are being used pretty heavily for
other things by freeing the main processor to run the intensive Java apps
or ASP.Net apps.
That said, you might see an improvement, if you can get the gzip command
line command accellerated, or whatever your dump/tar/gtar equivalent uses.
--
"Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors
into trouble of all kinds."
-- Samuel Butler
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