[asterisk-biz] How many PCI cards can one PC handle?

[Andrew Kohlsmith]

On Wednesday 15 February 2006 23:19, Bjorn Asmul wrote:
> Before you run into cooling problems you would run into interrupt
> problems.
> For this kind of setup you need Sangoma cards. www.sangoma.com
> They outperform any other card, put less load on the CPU, and doesn't
> cause problems with PCI interrupts.

I have heard this several times, but nobody has given any concrete evidence, 
including detailled benchmarks which show any significant performance 
differences.  It has been my experience that Sangoma cards can and do 
experience interrupt sharing troubles on some hardware, just as Digium cards 
do, although admittedly on less hardware.  I personally have shared 
interrupts on Digium cards without issue, and even on "high use" peripherals.  
(TDM400 sharing with ethernet on a box that was also an NFS server.)

Don't get me wrong, I really do like the Sangoma cards, I am particularly in 
love with their S518 PCI ADSL modem, and I'm really interested in evaluating 
their Shark technology (hardware echo cans)... but blanket statements such as 
yours without a shred of evidence (biased or no) irritate the hell out of me, 
especially on a list that Digium is paying to provide.

-A.