Prototyping on using a DIMM slot as a high-performance I/O interface

DIMMnet-1 is a high-performance network interface for PC clusters that can be directly plugged into the DIMM slot of a PC. In this paper, the architecture, implementation and performance of DIMMnet-1 prototype are mentioned. Experience gained through the prototyping is also reported. In spite of the remaining defectiveness on the implementation, the latency performance is better than that of any other NICs. Although the performance is one-third of the compared to planned bandwidth, two-way sustained bandwidth of DIMMnet-1 on inexpensive PC is not inferior to PCI-X version Infiniband on an expensive server PC. DIMMnet-1 prototype shows the great potential for using a DIMM slot as a high-performance I/O interface on an inexpensive PC.