[Pc_Support] Home Server, is PCIe it?

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Sun, 2006-07-02 at 01:08 -0400, Jason Boxman wrote:
> Well, for the bandwidth.  From reading below it sounds like I'm in the same 
> boat as before, though.  Oh well.

No, not necessarily.

32-bit @ 33MHz PCI is 133MBps -- _shared_.
2-bit @ 1.5GHz PCIe x1 is 250MBps** bi-directional -- _dedicated_.
**NOTE:  It's less than this, with 8/10 encoding.

> I figured as much.

It's still better to use a PCIe x1 "dumb" NIC or storage card than a PCI
"dumb" NIC or storage card from an I/O saturation standpoint.

> Okay.  My objective is primarily to have enough bandwidth to push serious I/O 
> over GbE without contention between storage and network I/O.

You _can_ do that for a SOHO using PCIe x1 slots.
It's just not going to be like "enterprise" solutions.
But certainly better than old PCI solutions.  ;->


-- 
Bryan J. Smith           Professional, technical annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
----------------------------------------------------------
The existence of Linux has far more to do with the breakup
of AT&T's monopoly than anything Microsoft has ever done.