CPU Choices

[Eric Kuhnke]

Hi Bill, Nick:

I second what Bill says about 1Us...  there is a Dual AthlonMP 1.2Ghz 1U
platform available, but it *just barely* manages to cool itself.  If you
stack more than 4 of them, you'll have a meltdown.

So if your heart is set on 1Us, you'll be going with dual P3/1GHz boxes.
Certainly not slow at all, my company sells a lot of them in various
configurations.

We've had good luck with the Tyan S2462 Dual Athlon board, and socketted
P4/Xeon boards in 2U chassis.


Eric Kuhnke
Lead Engineer / Operations Manager
Fnord Datacenter Systems Inc.
eric at fnordsystems.com
www.fnordsystems.com
voice: +1-360-527-3301

-----Original Message-----
From: beowulf-admin at beowulf.org [mailto:beowulf-admin at beowulf.org]On
Behalf Of Bill Harman
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2001 8:19 AM
To: n.gregory at garageflowers.co.uk; beowulf at beowulf.org
Subject: RE: CPU Choices


Nick;

Forget about using the P4 in a 1U configuration.  The voltage regulator on
the motherboard takes up more than 1U. You will need to work with a 2U
footprint as a minimum.  You can get the AMD MP in a 1U, but, beware of
the
heat issues, you will need above average air flow.

Bill




-----Original Message-----
From: beowulf-admin at beowulf.org [mailto:beowulf-admin at beowulf.org]On
Behalf Of n.gregory at garageflowers.co.uk
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2001 4:35 AM
To: beowulf at beowulf.org
Subject: CPU Choices


(sorry if this gets posted twice)
Hello,
I am doing some research into the configuration of a 32 1U node Beowulf
cluster
and have a question regarding CPU configuration.

The current choice is between Intel P4s as Itaniums seem a little bleeding
edge at
the moment, or the latest AMD chips.

AMD seem to be getting a impressive performance for the price, but I?m a
little
concerned about the lack of mature multiprocessor chipsets and their heat
issues.

Intel on the other-hand have the MP chipsets but seem to be falling down
with
current lack of (non-commercial ) complier that support MMX and SSE, and
the
whole issue of Rambus Vs DDR memory.

I would be grateful for any insight into a choice of CPU and its
configuration in
terms of price/performance/expandability, or any other factor I should be
considering.

Thanks
Nick

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