APENet: a high speed, low latency 3D interconnect network

Summary form only given. We present APENet, a new high speed, low latency, 3-dimensional interconnect architecture optimized for PC clusters running LQCD-like numerical applications. The hardware implementation is based on a single PCI-X 133MHz network interface card hosting six independent bidirectional channels with a peak bandwidth of 676 MB/s each direction and measured latency less than 10 μs. The internal packet switching capabilities of the network card allows up to three couple of links simultaneously active. The current software environment, based on Linux, is made of a low-level library and a high-level application library. An MPI implementation and a network device driver are being actively developed.