[Beowulf] 'dual' Quad solution from Tyan

[Douglas Eadline]

> who says it's so great?  the HT fabric is pretty far from a "perfect"
> low-latency 16-port crossbar, for instance.  also, is it really cheaper?
> how about if you compare to four 2-socket DC nodes?
>

Cost is an interesting question. Presumably the more processor sockets per
motherboard means a lower number of units sold and thus higher cost. Of
course, you need to factor in the reduction in the number of HDDs
(if you use them on nodes) interconnect, power supplies and packaging.
Running benchmarks to get price/performance data seems to be the only
way to answer such questions.

In the past, there were similar discussions about quad Pentium pro systems.
Memory bandwidth was an issue, but IIRC, the cost for a quad system was
much higher than buying four singles.

-- 
Doug