Ethernet over SATA

[kernull]

The SATA speed is very good, 300MB/sec.
Gigabit ethernet is only 125MB/sec
Can 1 SATA interface be converted to 2 Ethernet 1Gbit interfaces and use those interfaces in an Etherchannel ? Is this technically possible? Or maybe such device already exist? If so, with 6 SATA ports on a good motherboard you could have 1.8GBytes/sec (14.4Gbits) transfer for a cluster node for example.

 

[GhislainG]

As far as I know, it doesn't exist and it would serve no purpose since there are no 1.8 Gb switches. You can use 10 Gb Ethernet cards (and switches already exist for those).

 

[pisakjanos]

10 Gb ethernet cards are expensive, as well as 10 gb switches (>3000 $ and only 4 ports of 10 GB)

I find a very attractive idea to implement ethernet over SATA, especially for realizing less expensive clusters.

SATA 3 is 6 GB/s. and you can have even 10 SATA ports integrated on a motherboard. Comparatively a dual 10 gigabit adapter like Intel 10GBE Af DA 2 Port Server-PCIE NIC SFP+ costs 600$.

 

[pisakjanos]

I think it is doable, modifying only the bios and drivers.

 

[Kewlx25]

SATA works at the hardware level like HyperTransport or QPI. You would have to change up the SATA spec to work which means new BIOS/Drivers/Chipsets